Amat Victoria Curam
by Spirit Ryder
Summary: The world died before Mari was even born. Now she's been given a a chance to go back and save it, to give her and her parents a real home. That is, if the dark realities of the past don't swallow her whole first. Rated M for swearing. Chapter 7 up
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not Own Neon Genesis Evangelion or Rebuild of Evangelion, Studio Gainax does.

_Amat Victoria Curam_

Chapter 1: Wishes

The Sea was calm with the red sea lapping gently on the shore. The night sky was cloudless, filled with stars and an almost full moon. Mari loved nights like that; she could just sit on the beach and her problems would just seem to fade away, for a while at least. Not tonight though, no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get the events of the past few hours out of her mind.

She should have reacted better than that. She was almost a teenager for Heaven's sake. Crying and running away were the actions of a baby. It wasn't the first time they had a fight, not by a long shot. It wasn't close to their worst argument. It wasn't even the first time she ran away. It was not like mom actually meant what she said, did she?

"Lovely night isn't it?" came a calm and definitely unknown male voice from behind her.

Mari just about leaped up in surprise, but instead just turned around to a see a boy standing there. He looked about her age, maybe a bit older, but younger than her mother and father for sure. His pale features and red eyes reminded her greatly of the giant half of a head in the ocean that her parents never really liked to talk about, but which she swore she heard them whispering things about from time to time.

"Who...Who are you?" She asked, her voice filled with curiosity, but with a slight edge of fear to it.

"I am an old friend of your father's, more importantly I am a jinn, and I am here on a very important Mission," he replied in the same calm voice.

"A what?" she asked in bewilderment.

"I suppose it was too much to expect you to get that. Perhaps 'genie' would be the better term to use here," he replied

Mari narrowed her eyes and adjusted her glasses; this guy was becoming more and more suspicious by the second.

"Yeah, I saw that movie and you aren't blue enough, or telling enough jokes, for that to be true. But if the rest of that is true, and you do know my dad, how did you get out of the ocean? It's been 14 years since Third Impact; Dad said if anyone could have come out of the ocean they would have long before now," she asked, remembering the days she spent during the winter watching the sea, hoping that someone, anyone, would come out.

"Did Shinji sail around the world? Perhaps plenty of people are washing upon the shores of South America and Europe," he said with a small smile.

"I guess that makes sense,"she replied as she began thinking about the rather large and mostly in good shape boat they once found in the ruins while looking for a new generator. Perhaps it was time for a little family boat trip.

"Anyways," she continued, trying to focus again after the brief distraction, "you should come with me. I am sure Dad would be very happy to see you."

"Perhaps," the boy replied. "but visiting him is not what I am here to do. As I said before, I am a genie, and I am here to grant a wish."

"Only one?" Mari asked, in a voice filled with both suspicion and disappointment. She could have done a lot with three wishes.

"One is all you are going to need. One wish is going to get you everything you ever wanted, the only thing you ever truly wanted, a normal, happy life," he replied.

Mari pondered for a second. A life free from hours of taking care of crops, free to go shopping in a real store instead of picking over the bones of the destroyed city for supplies, free from most of the fighting, free from having to fight off those giant hornets every other week. That would be a great life.

"But you said there might be life in elsewhere, why should I wish for something when it's out there already?"

The boy frowned slightly.

"Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you and your family are the only ones left, maybe there are others left but the distance is too vast to travel, or the place would not accept you and your family. Are you willing to leave something this important up to that big a chance?" he asked her.

"True," she replied. "Okay then, I wish Third Impact never happened!"

Mari paused for a second, and then looked all around expectantly. After a few seconds of looking around, she turned back to the boy, disappointment filling her face.

"It's still all the same!" she shouted.

"Be patient," he said reassuringly. "I can't grant that wish directly, but I can give you the means to stop Third Impact."

"Oh?" Mari inquired. "And how exactly am I going to stop Third Impact?"

"By piloting an Evangelion of course," he stated.

Mari's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Really," he replied.

When Mari was little her parents would always tell stories about the great battles they waged against the Angels using the mighty Evangelions. Just imagining the epic conflicts between giant abominations and massive robots filled her with a primal sort of glee. She loved a good physical fight, and the prospect of fighting toe to toe with an Angel in a giant death machine of her own was almost too exciting.

"Well then, what are we doing standing around here?" Mari said as she grabbed him by the arm. "Come one, whatever your name is. Time's a wasting and there are Angels out there that are just waiting for me to stab them to death! Wait . . . you do have a name right?"

"Of Course I do."

As he said that she started falling, falling very fast into pitch blackness. Soon the boy and the world above winked out of existence leaving her in what felt like pure nothingness. For what couldn't have been more than a few minutes, but felt like so much longer, she couldn't see or hear anything. Then a green glow appeared below and to the left of her.

The glow quickly rose, Mari catching a brief glimpse of white flesh and teeth grappling with purple and glowing green metal. The battle silently rose above her before disappearing completely into the pitch blackness above.

Mari wasn't afraid, well maybe a little afraid, okay a whole lot afraid, but being afraid was perfectly understandable considering the situation. In retrospect, she really should have asked him exactly _how _she was going to get back to the past. She had assumed it would involve a machine or a car of some sort, like in the movies. If he had told her that time travel – that was what this was, right? Yeah, had to be – involved getting thrown down into pure darkness that stretched on for seemingly forever and was filled with things, giant fighting things, she would have…well she would accepted anyways, but she would have at least paused for a second to consider.

Mari's thoughts were interrupted; she could feel herself slowing down and another light appeared directly beneath her.

/-

"Arrgh!"

Mari landed back first on a bed.

"Ow."

Mari blinked; the blackness she had fallen out of had vanished completely, leaving just a plain ceiling. She looked around; there was another bed next to her, and there was a backpack on it with a note attached to it.

She quickly grabbed the note, on it in big bold letters was, "**Sorry for the sudden drop. I would have been nicer about it, but there was simply no time. I hope this little gift bag makes your stay a little easier. I filled it with a few of your things from home so your stay in Russia isn't so lonely. I hope you don't mind.**"

Russia, why was she in Russia? Dad always told her the Angels only attacked Tokyo-3. Mari turned over the note looking for an answer.

"**P.S. Your name here is Mari Illustrious Makinami, be sure to remember it. Referring to yourself by your real name would draw unwanted attention to yourself, very unwanted attention.**"

The name was nice enough, not one she would have chosen, but it did have a heroic quality to it. Still, why was she in Russia? Maybe there was something in the backpack that answered that question.

"Clothes, shoes, oh hey my walkman, more clothes, lucky cross, books, um… thingy."

Mari grabbed a small, flat, folded case out of the pack and opened it, revealing an assorted amount of strange looking paper bills and a plastic card with her picture on it. She examined it closer.

"Wait, why does it say I'm from Birmingham, UK? I don't even know where that is."

Mari scratched her head; this was becoming more confusing by the second.

A loud knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

"Just a second!" Mari quickly stuffed the things back into the backpack and hurried to the door.

She opened it to reveal a tall man with a pony tail standing there

"H…hi."

"Hello, I'm Ryoji Kaji. They sent me to escort you to Bethany Base."

He extended his hand out. She stared it awkwardly for a second.

"Oh right, handshake." She mumbled as she grabbed his hand and shook it rather limply.

"Hi. Mari Ik...Illustrious Makinami, pleased to meet you."

"Likewise. So what exactly have they told you about the job?"

Oh crap.

"Um…well, not all a lot really. I was just kind of uh, told I have to pilot the Evangelion, then they put me on a plane out here, and then put me in this…hotel," she tried desperately to suppress her panic.

Kaji chuckled a bit

.

"Not surprising, Unit-05 was just about to be sent to graveyard before we found the Third Angel, and none of the other Nerv branches were willing to give up their pilots, so we were in a bit of rush to find a Pilot. I'll explain everything in trip to Bethany."

They captured an Angel; she didn't remember any stories that involved Angels being captured, or in Russia. Still, she was going to get to pilot an Evangelion, and she wasn't going to let little off details get in the way of that.

/

Mari followed Kaji outside the hotel. As she got outside she stopped and looked around, the night sky was almost exactly like it was back home, although the stars didn't seem as bright, perhaps that was because of all the lights in the city around her and the moon . . .

"Something wrong, Mari?" Kaji asked as Mari stared transfixed at the moon.

"No, it's nothing," she replied.

"Well then, you should come to the car, the helicopter pilot tends to get very annoyed if passengers are late."

"Right, coming," she replied.

Mari was fairly certain that her parents said the moon didn't have that big red stain on it back before Third Impact. That wasn't a quite so minor detail.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion or any of its AU stories.

Author's Notes: Yes this was inspired by a discussion on , but to fair I was part of the original conversation. Also this isn't a novelization of the Rebuild movies from Mari's POV, although I do think that the "Mari being the time travelling child of EOE Shinji/Asuka" Theory does have some merit. So yeah, this will diverge a bit from the movies, how much it will diverge, well… just wait and see.

Chapter 2: This is (Not) the beginning

The ocean below them was red, blood red, maybe even a darker red then the sea at home. Mom had always told her it was blue before Third Impact. Did they lie about that, and the moon? Why would they lie about things like that?

Mari turned away from the helicopter's window, trying to block out her worries.

"Something wrong?" Kaji asked.

"No, it's nothing," Mari replied dismissively.

"For nothing it sure seems to be bugging you a lot."

"It's just I…have never flown in a helicopter before, makes me kind of uneasy," which was true, this was the first time she had been in anything flying – well, intentionally at least – and it was a rather unnerving experience.

"Anyways, I thought you were going to explain stuff, or whatever."

"Right, of course," Kaji said as he opened a rather large folder. "How much do you know about the Angels and the Evas? I imagine you must have been told at least few private details about them before being shipped out here."

"Angels are big giant monsters that like to wipe out mankind, and Evangelions are basically Angels that were stuck into a suit of armor and had a human soul put inside of them," Mari replied eagerly.

Kaji looked at her blankly for a second. "How . . . how do you know about that last part?"

Oh crap, she probably wasn't supposed to know about that part yet.

"Um, well, you know, I overheard my parents talk about it one time," technically true, although it was more like listening to her dad's occasional drunken rants.

"Oh, I had no idea your parents were working something like that before they died," Kaji replied. "You shouldn't have heard about" Kaji added, "so it's best if you keep that between us for the time being."

Wait, what was that about dead parents?

"So what does that say about my parents?" Mari asked, very puzzled by the news.

"Oh nothing much, just the standard stuff like birth and death dates, employment and medical history, plus details about the Disaster at NERV-Britain… you probably don't want to talk about that part right?"

Mari had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

"Um, yeah. I mean, I have come to terms with it, but it's still a sore subject," Mari replied, desperately hoping she didn't say anything that might blow her cover. "Look, could we just get to you explaining stuff? I didn't come here to play 20 questions."

"No problem. About the three months ago a group of scientists investigating the receding Siberian tundra discovered this."

Kaji handed her a picture of what looked like a giant black and gray centipede crossed with a snake, frozen in a giant slab of ice, and surrounded by a group of men and women.

That was an Angel? She had always pictured Angels as being a lot like those monsters she saw on those old black and white movies she watched with her parents when the TV was actually working. Where the Angels really just big insect like things? Oh God, did that mean that there was a giant hornet Angel?

"The Third Angel. Luckily, unlike the first one, this one stayed dormant long enough for us to seal it up, which actually presents us a bit of a problem."

"How so?" Mari asked nervously.

"The Angel could provide us with a wealth of knowledge on everything from how to better fight the other Angels to making better medicines; hopefully we can even turn it into an Evangelion. The problem is that any real studying of the Angel carries with it the risk, however small, of the Angel breaking out and going on a rampage. So we can't exactly store it in a normal NERV base, if it got out it could destroy an entire city in a matter of minutes."

"Is the Angel really that powerful?" Mari asked. The stories she heard made the angels sound powerful, but that sounded a lot worse.

"Maybe, we have no way to be sure right now, but better to be safe than sorry. Which is why Bethany Base was built, it's 60 miles away from the nearest land in Dikson, and it's surrounded by the pride of the Russian Navy. Not that they are going to do much good if it breaks out, but, hey, it's great for show."

"So you want to me here to guard it, right?"

"Well the term we have been using is 'seal guardian,' but yes. In the event it ever breaks out we need you to pilot Eva Unit-05, and destroy the Angel before it escapes Bethany."

Maybe that's why the boy sent her to Russia, maybe originally they didn't have anyone to pilot this Eva and so the angel escaped, but how did it escaping lead to humans causing Third Impact? Mari pondered the problem for a second; it was probably for reasons far too complex for her to understand yet. She was only twelve, after all.

"Hopefully it never comes to that," Kaji continued, interrupting her thoughts. "Especially not anytime soon."

That was rather troubling.

"What would happen if it broke out soon?" Mari asked.

"We would all die, Unit-05 . . . well, Unit-05 needs a bit of work before its ready," Kaji replied sheepishly.

That was even more troubling.

"How much work?"

/

Mari was no stranger to disappointment. For her 10th birthday she wanted a pet, she begged for a pet, she had explained in detail how she would be able to take care of it with no extra burden on anyone else, and what did she get? A stuffed penguin and a locket, the penguin was cute and the locket was very nice, but they were. Not. A. Pet.

She didn't talk for three weeks after that.

Her 10th birthday was _nothing_ compared to what she was feeling right now.

The Evangelion was massive, bigger than most of the ruins in the city, bigger than she could have possibly imagined, and it was horrible. The thing was covered head to toe in bandages, but it was quite obvious what was wrong with it. The arms were freakishly spindly and bent in multiple unnatural ways, like the arms had been broken in multiple places and healed wrong. The legs were worse, the right one was normal sized but it had large growths all over it, and the left one had a third leg growing out of its knee.

"What… I just… WHAT? What am I suppose to do in that? Break my arms at the angel?" Mari shouted.

"Like I said, it needs some work. The good news is that the torso and head are in very good shape, if they were in bad shape we would have had to make a whole new one from scratch, and who knows what shape that one would have been in." Kaji replied.

"So what am I supposed to do until you get it fixed?" Mari asked angrily.

"Oh, we got a number of things for you to do before it's operational. We have to get you trained for starters, we are also going to need your help actually getting the thing up and running, and of course when we finally get around to converting the angel we are going to need your help for that," Kaji explained.

"Oh, okay." Mari said dejectedly.

"I hate to ask this again, but are you sure nothing is wrong?" Kaji asked, slightly exasperated.

"No, it's just that I had a rather different impression of what I was going to be doing. The guy I spoke to gave me the impression I was going to be fighting Angels like right away. I am just… a little disappointed, that's all," well, she was a lot disappointed, and a whole lot of other emotions, but this man wasn't family. She didn't want to talk about stuff like that with him.

"You're… disappointed about that?" Kaji gave her a rather puzzled look.

"Yeah, I mean I know it's dangerous and all, but come on. It's piloting a giant mech into battle with monsters. That's like the most awesome thing in the world," Mari replied eagerly.

Kaji frowned.

"Don't give me that look; I know what's at stake." Mari said defensively. "I just want to enjoy myself while saving the world."

"Well, if you know what's at stake then you should understand how important training is," Kaji replied.

"Right, of course, that makes sense. I'm just sleepy and probably saying stupid stuff," Mari stated, trying to hide her disappointment.

"Understandable, you've had a long day I imagine. Why don't I escort you to your room, and you can get some rest? Someone will be there in the morning to escort you to your official briefing, and the start of your training."

/

Mari looked at the alarm clock on the table next to her bed, it was 3:30 AM, and she had been trying to get to sleep for 3 hours now. Although really why should she be sleeping? Tomorrow was the start of something huge, something that was going to save the world, and she was going to be at the center of it. So why was there this massive knot in her stomach?

Well, the unexpected delay was annoying, but like Kaji said it was important, and it's not like the boy would have sent her all this way just to have her sit around in the middle of nowhere. Although that boy was very weird to say the least. Mom and dad didn't talk about the past much, but Mari was pretty sure they would have mentioned that teenage boys were able to time travel if they could. He also had a very odd scent . . .

Maybe that boy was an Angel?

Mari chuckled at the idea. Angels were big giant monsters, not freakishly pale teenage boys, and, more importantly, were all dead. Her parents had assured her of that a long time ago; although they also told her the sea was blue and the moon didn't have that ugly stain on it before Third Impact, and yet there they were the same as ever. Why would they have lied to her about things like that?

Mari peered over her bed at the blurry outline of backpack resting against the nightstand.

And how did he get so much of her stuff? Did he sneak into her room after he sent her here? Did her parents give him the stuff?

No, that was silly; her parents would never allow her to anything as risky as this. Hell, when she got back they were probably going to be more upset about her running off than they are going to be relived about having a nice world to move to. When she got back…

How was she going to get back? They were years in the future. It was more than just years away actually. If everything went according to plan there wouldn't be any Third Impact, so by the time she got to that time her parents would be totally different people.

Mari tried to wrap her head around the mechanics of what she had done. She couldn't get back to them at all without that boy, and who knows how long it would before she saw him again. Days? Months? A year? After all the Angels were dead? Which could take who knows how long?

Great, so she was going to be gone for years _and_ a large amount of her stuff was going to be missing from her room. That _totally_ wouldn't cause her parents to freak out, especially considering they know it was something they said that made her leave in the first place. Yeah they totally wouldn't blame themselves – well, mostly dad blaming mom – and spend countless hours looking for her, sending an already delicate home life into a spiraling pit of rage, despair, and violence. No, things were probably going to be just fine and dandy while she's gone.

_Sure, what mom said was bad, but she probably didn't mean it, and even if she did mean it, it wasn't the worst thing in the world._

After all, it wasn't like she had said she hated Mari, far from it, she loved her daughter, it's just that she thought having Mari around was huge strain on both time and resources, which was probably true, and she would rather not have that massive strain. It's not like she meant for Mari to hear her say that, and it's not like she meant to say, "I think we should totally murder our daughter so we can have a day off once in a while."

Mari tried to push the thoughts of parents out of her mind for the moment and get to sleep, tried being the key word. She spent the next half hour tossing and turning as thoughts about her mistake filled her mind.

Finally giving up on trying to sleep for the time being, Mari flicked the desktop lamp on, bathing most of the room in a soft light. She sat up, and grabbed her glasses. The cheap frame snapped in her hands, sending the glasses crashing into the corner of the end table with a sickening crack, before tumbling on to the floor.

"Not again," Mari muttered to herself as she knelt down and searched for her glasses.

Mari had broken or lost six sets of glasses in the past five years. Something like that would be frustrating in the best of situations, but when every eye doctor in the world was so much orange tang and the few mostly intact eye glass stores tended to be annoyingly far away, and surrounded by large and unstable buildings . . . Well, the situation goes from 'frustrating' to 'reducing a grown man to tears' rather quickly.

She found them after a few seconds and put them on to inspect the damage.

"Oh that's just great."

The left side of the frame had broken in half, and the right part of the glasses was covered in an almost spider-web like series of cracks.

Mari began looking through her backpack, hoping that the boy had packed one of her spare glasses.

/

The bed and the surrounding floor were covered in a number of Mari's things as she fished around the bottom of her backpack trying to find her spare pair of glasses.

"Great, just great. That boy stuffs most of my room into my backpack, except my spares. Apparently he thought I needed both a stuffed penguin and a stuffed panda, but not a… Hello, what do we have here?" Mari pulled out a small, beat up, gray case.

She stared at the case in confusion. She didn't recognize it at all. So she opened it to reveal a jewel encrusted sliver locket with a thin sliver chain. A sad smile of recognition appeared on Mari's face; unlike the penguin – which was currently lying at the foot of her bed – she hadn't seen the locket since she had angrily thrown it at her dad shortly after unwrapping.

Mari grabbed the locket out of case. It was round, and the front was covered in mix of clear blue stones laid out in circles with a big blue one in the center. The back was smooth, mirror like silver. Her mother had told her that the blue stones, she called them 'sapphires,' were her birthstone.

Mari was never sure why her birthday was somehow tied to a rock. Oh, it was a very pretty and shiny rock for sure, and the ruins always seemed to have the shiny rocks in thick glass cases in the fancy looking rooms, but she was never quite able to understand why the shiny stuff was such a big deal to Pre-Impact people.

Looking it over, Mari noticed a button on its edge. She pressed it, causing it snap wide open, revealing two pictures. The first picture was of her parents when they were younger, much younger than when she had last seen them. She had never seen her mom with her hair that long, or wearing a skirt for that matter, and what the hell were those things in her hair? They looked little red metal horns. Her dad looked pretty much the same, although shorter and smaller. He was holding something that was wrapped in light pink blanket. A head poked through on one end. It was a baby; it was _her_ as a baby.

Mari was a bit taken aback by this. She had never seen a baby picture of herself before, and everybody in the picture seemed so happy – well, except for herself, she was just sleeping peacefully. They were happy back then, _very_ happy judging by the downright goofy expressions on their faces. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen her parents that happy.

She recognized the second picture immediately, it was her ninth birthday, and she was standing in front of the house with parents, proudly wearing her new blue dress. She remembered because about two hours later she was covered head to toe in hives do to an allergic reaction with said dress. Still, besides the horrible itchiness, that day was actually pretty good. Not as fun as whatever the hell was going on the day of her baby picture judging by the difference in her parent's smiles between the two photos, but it was still a pretty fun day.

So why did the boy give her this? Was he taunting her? Was this all some cruel joke, and this was just his way of saying, "Hey you know that life you ran away from? It actually wasn't so bad. You were just too much of a stupid brat to see that. Good luck with your new lonely boring life and confusing, dead, fake family, you loser." That was a rather cruel, not to mention very specific, thing to do to a person you just met, especially for someone who claimed to be a family friend.

If… if it wasn't a trick, and the boy was going to send her parents here sooner or later, then maybe the locket was a reminder of what she was fighting for, what will make all the upcoming tedium worth it.

Yeah that was it, Mari thought. That had to be it, and even if that wasn't the case, she would find her own way to get back to her time and bring her parents here.

The boy did it, how hard could it be?


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: Thanks everybody for the reviews and thank you for being patient with me, I ran into a number of problems that delayed this a few months. Now this chapter/story is going to take some liberties with Bethany Base, we kind of have to since we don't see or hear that much about it before things start going boom, and as my beta pointed out Bethany in general is rather implausible. Although that's pretty much par for the course when it comes to engineering feats in Evangelion, so don't get too caught up in the logistics of it.

Also please be sure to check out "Dealing with the Devil" by said beta Cody MacArthur Fett; the original draft of it was what inspired the fic.

As well, I really hope the thing(s) I introduce in this chapter doesn't piss off anyone or cause anyone to scream "Ruined forever".

Chapter 3: My day with Charon.

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

A fist came down hard on the alarm clock, silencing it for the moment. Mari cracked an eye open, the blurry numbers of the alarm blinking silently in front of her. She groaned in frustration.

_Already? God it feels like I just got to sleep._

Mari carefully – well, as carefully as a barely aware mostly blind person can be – reached for her glasses on the table.

_Wait 6:00am? I only get up this early when I am helping mom or daddy with the crops or the generators, and I'm certainly not doing either of those things now._

Mari stared at the alarm clock angrily for daring to interrupt her sleep so pointlessly.

_Must be a mistake or something, should have checked the thing before I went to bed. … Meh, Kaji probably would have told me if I needed to get up this early._

Mari fumbled with the alarm, trying to turn it off. The alarm switched from beeping to the sound of ocean on a calm night. Confused, Mari flicked a switch on the alarm, changing the sound of the alarm to a weird animal call of some sort. Even more confused and frustrated, Mari grabbed the clock's cord and yanked it out of the wall, finally silencing the offending device.

Mari took off her glasses and pulled the comforter closer to her, deciding that she would wake up when she was ready, because (future) world saving angel killers need a full night's sleep.

*BEEEP* *BEEEP*

A fist instinctively slammed into the alarm again.

*BEEEP* *BEEEP*

_The hell?_

Mari bolted up in surprise, glancing briefly at the clock to confirm that it was still off.

An incredibly loud and deep wailing, for lack of a better term, filled the room.

"I'm up! I'm up, okay! Just stop with the noises for crying out loud," Mari yelled as she scrambled out of bed.

"Sorry, sorry, just used to waking up more _difficult_ people."

Mari quickly grabbed her glasses and turned towards the voice.

Standing in the doorway was a woman holding an air-horn and a small clock, which took Mari by surprise for a second. After the boy and Kaji she was beginning to think almost everyone in the past was man.

"…Hi . . . Comrade," Mari wasn't exactly sure what else to say.

"Again, sorry about that," the woman said as she tucked the air-horn into her armpit and extended her hand out to Mari.

_What is it with people and touching hands?_

Mari gave her best handshake, which admittedly was very limp and awkward by normal standards.

"Hi, I am Mana Krishima…What happened to your glasses?" Mana asked as she noticed the rather dire condition Mari's glasses were in.

"Oh… I kinda dropped them," Mari replied sheepishly

"Oh, okay. Well we can get those fixed no problem. As I was saying, my name is Mana, and I am going to help you get set up with everything today. Just so you know we just found out you were coming at the last minute, and most of your records got lost in transit or something. Thus we are going to have to do a lot of rather boring stuff that we would normally have taken care of before you got here, like medical exams, and getting you your base ID, nothing too bad," her tone was friendly and excited, like she had just received really good news or something.

"But it's like six in the morning!" Mari complained.

Mana chuckled. "Don't let some of the IPEA hear you say that, some of them have been working almost 24 hour shifts trying to figure out how to get EVA Unit-05 working with the resources we have. Look, I know this is all new to you, but stuff like your day starting at 6 AM or earlier is actually pretty common. Don't worry, most of your going to do today just requires you to sit and stand in certain positions when asked to, and a little bit of basic school level testing," she explained.

"Wait, I'm going have to do school work?" Mari asked, horrified.

"Thought you were going to escape that when you got shipped here didn't you?" Mana teased.

Yes, _escaping_ school work, that was her problem. She totally wasn't worried about the fact that her only contact with school was in the occasional movie she saw. Which, frankly, always left her confused about how such horrific institutions became so wide spread, and how everyone hadn't been rendered insane by their time in them. Plus, she was fairly sure what education she did have was rather limited compared to the norm here. Only so much education you can get when your teachers have like seven other more important things to do during an average day.

"Well…can I at least take a shower and change before we do stuff?" Mari looked down at the pink fuzzy PJs she was wearing.

Mana checked her wristwatch

"Sure, we got the time, and it's not like Spetsnaz will bust down the door if we are late…probably."

/

"Whoa, I didn't think showers could get so hot so fast. That was the greatest shower I ever had, and so many soaps, I've never smelled so many wonderful things!" Mari squealed as she walked out of the bathroom, dressed in a pair of slacks and a green t-shirt, her long hair styled into twin ponytails.

"I think you might have over done it be on the perfume Mari," Mana said as she plugged her nose.

"Oh, I could have sworn that was deodorant. Thought it was on the strong side. Still smells very nice though."

Mana stared at the girl in confusion for a second.

"Ookay, well it will probably wash away soon enough anyways," Mana said. "Anyways, we got an appointment to keep so follow me out to the cart and we can be on our way."

/

There were people, _so many people,_ dozens of men and women she didn't know and would probably never know, and Mana and her were just driving right by them. Mari continued to stare at the passing people as she and Mana drove down a rather large hallway.

"Are you okay?" Mana asked, noticing how distracted Mari was.

"Huh? Oh yeah, yeah I am fine. Just…noticing that we are passing a lot of people, that's all," Mari replied, turning away from the crowd of people she was looking at.

"This is nothing; you should see Tokyo-3 in the afternoon the crowds there would blow your mind."

"You've been to Tokyo-3? What's it like?" Mari asked eagerly.

Her parents had told a lot about what Tokyo-3 looked like in its prime, but Mari wanted to hear a fresh perspective on it.

"Oh, my last time there was practically a lifetime ago, it's probably changed a lot since then," Mana said rather sadly.

"You don't look _that_ old," Mari observed.

"Thanks…Still it was long time ago, I was barely a teenager back then, and Tokyo-3 is one of those cities that can change drastically if you go away for a long weekend, much less a decade… If you want to know what I think, it was very nice then and it is probably nicer now. Of course it's so full of people you can barely breath sometimes and it's likely going to be the sight of the angel attacks, but hey every city has it's problems… And here we are."

The cart came to sudden stop, taking Mari by surprise.

"Phlegethon level medical offices, home to all your medical testing and pinball needs," Mana called out.

"This place has strange names for things," Mari commented.

"Indeed it does, now let's go."

/

In Mari's mind the visit to the doctor would go like this: The doctor would come in take her temperature, check her ears and throat for whatever, ask her a few questions, then send her on her way with a lollipop or something. Worst case she has to take a pill or some nasty weird colored liquid, and then she got a lollipop. Because in most shows or movies she had seen the doctors in them gave kids lollipop, or a sticker.

What she wasn't expecting was needles.

As a result of having both an angel and an unarmored Evangelion, Bethany had taken a number of extra steps to avoid disease outbreaks that might kill either of them, or worse. One of these steps being a round of shots designed to fight and prevent a number of infections.

Mari had never gotten a shot before. Vaccinations were one of those things her parents decided was too risky and too difficult to try by themselves, like auto repair and operating heavy farm equipment. So when a girl who didn't even know about getting shots, much less had one, was approached by a doctor with a somewhat large needle she reacted _poorly_.

/

"I can't believe you punched out a doctor," Mana said to Mari as they walked down a hallway out of the Doctor's office.

"He was coming at me with at me with a giant needle!" Mari proclaimed defensively

"No, that doesn't surprise me, what surprises me is that you knocked him out cold. I think he is still out."

Mari shrugged her shoulders.

"I did a lot of physical activity at home…I'm not going to get in trouble for that am I?"

"No, the doctor has taken worse hits. Besides, he is way too proud to admit to being one-shoted by a 12 year old girl."

"…I didn't shoot him."

"It's an expression Mari."

"Oh…So where to now?"

"Now we go to the eye doctor's to get you new glasses. Just promise not to punch her out please."

"She isn't going to come at me with a sharp pokey thing is she?"

"No, and as a rule if one of the people we visit today comes at you with something sharp, don't attack unless I give the say so."

"Is there going to be a lot of stabbing today?"

"Not a lot, but some."

Mari turned towards Mana, her eyes wide with fear. "Why are so many people trying to stab me?" she wailed.

"Mari, let me make something perfectly clear, the doctor wasn't trying to stab you – well, technically he was, but not in the way you think. He was trying to inject medicine into you. You are aware what medicine is right?" Mana asked, rather pointedly.

"Of course I know what medicine is!" Mari retorted defensively

"Well I couldn't tell, considering you act like you spent most of your life until tell now running around in the woods like a freaking fairy or something, and you just discovered this amazing place called civilization. Look, I know that Russia is probably a whole another world from what you're used to, but you have to at least try to act like a normal person. Otherwise everyone is going to stare at you like your some sort of crazy person," Mana explained, exasperation clear in her voice.

"I…It's just…I just…" Mari wracked her brain trying to think of a response. "Well, you see, I was sick when I was little, and I have been homeschooled ever since then, so I don't exactly know what normal would be in public."

"Wait, you spent your whole life home-schooled? Didn't you ever like go out to mall or something when you were older?"

"Err no, I lived in a remote part of…Wales, yeah, spent most of my life in the Welsh countryside, mostly surrounded by sheep, it's also why I don't have a British accent."

"But your parents worked like fifteen minutes away from London-2."

"…I spent most of my time with either the maid or a private teacher."

"What was the maid's name?"

"Hikari."

"_Ookay…_So you had a very isolated childhood, probably spent locked in your parent's basement, so I guess expecting you to understand normal society is a bit much. Just, again, promise me you won't attack anyone coming at you with a needle unless I tell you too."

"I promise…So what I am supposed to do at the eye doctor's anyways?"

/

As the day went on Mari discovered that the past, or at least Bethany, was a rather strange mix of the incredibly amazing and the horribly boring. She spent the past few hours going past all sorts' strange machines, men and women in matching outfits marching down the hallways, and various other things that Mari could just spend hours staring at, and then Mana would take her to some stuffy room filled with grumpy people muttering things she didn't understand while they had her fill out massive stacks of papers, almost all them about her fake life.

Mari was really grateful her mother forced her to learn how to write when she was younger, she really would have been up a creak if she hadn't. Although Mana might have been able to bail her out in that situation. _She is a nice person like that_, Mari thought, _shame she can't help out now though_.

Mari stared at the computer in front of her. It was asking her a question, scratch that, it was asking her many, _many_ questions about seeming everything under the sun. When Mari had "school time" at home there had been tests of course, but never this long or this hard before.

_Why did the equation have an "A" in it? __What's a Chicago? What does Как дела even mean? How the hell are you supposed to divide a Y?_

Mari sighed, she didn't want to look like an idiot. Great pilots weren't idiots, her mom had already been to college when she was her age, and stuff like this should be easy for her. Of course, her mom had lived in a totally different world, and she didn't need to know how what the capital of Brazil was to pilot an Evangelion, right?

/

"Okay let's see how you did," Mana said as began looking over Mari's test results.

"Let's see in Basic Mathematics you got an 81 percent, pretty good, although you only got a 20 percent percent in the advance part, don't worry though that's high school and college level stuff; in Engineering you got a …92 percent, interesting; 77 percent in Basic Science; 5 percent in World History; a…95 percent in Russian?"

"Was that the one with the all the weird looking scribbles? Cause I just randomly guessed in that."

"But it had an essay question at the end!"

"At that point I got bored and just decided to type with my nose."

Mana stared at Mari, horrified and yet deeply amused by the girl's strange behavior.

"Right moving on. 20 percent in Advance Science; 75 percent in Japanese; 68 percent in English; 77 percent in _German_? Please tell me you didn't type with your butt for that part."

"No, I understand German. Most of what I know isn't very polite though," Mari said sheepishly.

"Well that's… something," Mana deadpanned. "Well, I'll just attach a few notes to this and send it to your teacher, and then we will go to the _really fun_ part of today."

A fake and hollow looking smile appeared on Mana's face.

"Alright that's a lie, a horrible horrible lie. What we're going to do next is probably the least fun part of today."

/

"So I just sit here?" Mari asked as she sat in the entry plug.

"Yes," came Kaji's voice over the intercom. "The LCL should be pumping in any moment now, and then we will start the synch test. Sorry again about the plug suit, we'll get you one that actually fits properly ASAP."

The grey plug suit pinched her in a number of places, and was so uncomfortably tight that she was sure it would start ripping in other places.

Blood red liquid began pouring in around her feet.

_So this is LCL huh? Looks exactly like ocean water to me. _

The tube rapidly filled with LCL. Mari hesitantly held in her breath for a second, before taking in a quick breath.

_Oh, that smells __**nice**_.

The LCL smelled a lot like the ocean, only much stronger, and without the nasty hint of salt and occasional decay.

To Mari it was the greatest smell in the world. It was like someone had managed to combine all the great scents in existence together. She was practically in heaven right then.

"You okay in there Mari?" Kaji asked over the intercom.

"_Oh yeah_, I'm just fine, just fine indeed," Mari said contently.

/

Mari blinked. She was staring at a ceiling.

_Huh. Must have nodded off or something in the tube. I probably should go…find…Mana. What in the world?_

Mari looked around. She was in her bedroom, _her_ bedroom, back at home.

_This isn't possible. I can't be back at home. Unless… was that all a dream?_

"Mari, breakfast is ready!" her mother called from downstairs

"Um, right, I'll be down in a second."

Mari looked around her room. Everything seemed to be in its proper place.

_That was really intense for a dream. Did I fall asleep on the beach, and my parents carried me back to bed?_

Mari rushed down the stairs.

"So, um, about last night, sorry about running away_, again_. But I just think if . . ."

Mari froze as she saw her mom. She was sitting there at the table, reading a book and eating homemade French toast like normal, but she looked like she was 13, her clothes ill fitting and oversized on her.

"Something wrong?" she asked, completely oblivious to the unreality of the situation.

"You…You're…"

The front door creaked open.

"Well, the bad news is the solar panel's broken. The good news is I know a place not an hour's walk from here that should have a replacement, so I think after breakfast I'll make a trip there. Hey, what's up with Mari?" her father looked just as young as he did in that photo in the locket, and his clothes even more ill fitting, like they were made for someone twice as tall and four times as buff as he was.

"I don't know, Shinji. She just got to the base of the stairs and froze up."

"This, this can't be happening," Mari said disbelievingly.

"Of course it is sweety. You just fell asleep in the ntry plug," her mother replied sincerely.

"I remember my first synch test, it was after someone had replaced all the LCL with orange soda. Bees harassed me for over a month after words, nearly drowned too."

Mari stared at her father in confusion.

"So…while I'm here I got to ask, why did you lie to me about the ocean being blue and stuff like that?"

"We didn't lie," her mother replied. "You know that."

"Mari."

"Uh, whattayoumeanbythat?"

"Mari!"

Mari opened her eyes; she was back in the tube.

"I'm up. I'm up." Mari Said, trying to push the odd dream out her head

"The test is over, Mari," Kaji said over the intercom. "I would let you sleep a bit more, but Mana says you got one more place to visit."

\

"Mana, is it okay if I ask a question?" Mari asked they both drove down what seemed liked the 500th corridor she had been down that day.

"Just as long as is it's not about where babies come from," Mana replied jokingly

"Was the ocean ever blue?"

"Yeah, before Second Impact it was a very lovely shade of blue, and then Antarctica exploded, which turned all the seas red in less than a year. Killed almost of all the fish too, so most of the world's coastlines stank horribly for years."

"Is LCL connected to whatever turned the ocean red?"

"Yes…wait, is it?" Mana thought it over for a few seconds. "…I don't know. Let's just go with probably, maybe. Anyways, we're almost at our last stop of the day, my bosses' office."

Mana stopped the cart and opened up the arm rest that divided their seats, pulling out the air horn and alarm clock from earlier.

Mari's eyes bulged. "Wait, why do we need those? It's like 4 in the afternoon."

"Jack, that's my boss, is a heavy sleeper, a _very _heavy sleeper."

They entered Jack's office, it was a mess with all sorts of files, magazines, old coffee cups, and windup toys scattered all across the floor and desk. Jack himself was sleeping in his chair, his head covered with a file.

"You might want to plug your ears."

Mari did so as Mana switched on the alarm clock and turned the volume to max. The little clock began beeping very very loudly, and even though covered ears it was almost painful.

Jack didn't move a muscle. Mana, clearly expecting this, began pressing on the air horn, which somehow managed to be even louder.

For an agonizing minute the alarm and horned blared. Mari thought she might never hear again. To her credit Mana never flinched once. Finally, Jack began to stir.

"Holy crap!" Mari shouted as her ears recovered. "Is this guy deaf or something?"

"No, no," Jack said sleepily. "I hear perfectly fine when I'm awake." he got up, walked over to Mari, and began vigorously shaking her hand

"Sorry about that. Normally I have headphones for the visitors, but I accidentally left them on the boat, and I can't seem to get my hands on a decent pair. Hi! I'm Jack, John Patrick Ryan, call me Jack, and I'm the new head of the IPEA here at Bethany. Basically, I'm charge of getting that giant robot of yours up and running, among other things."

Jack towered above Mari, he was easily a head higher than Kaji or even her father. Unlike either of them though his jet black hair was very short and neatly trimmed.

"Uh, hi," Mari said awkwardly. "So um, why exactly are we meeting now?"

"Oh, nothing major," Jack said causally. "I just want to go over your secondary job here at Bethany."

"I have another job?" Mari whined. "But I already got school, and hours sitting in a tube, and stuff!"

Jack chuckled. "Don't worry, it's a very minor, low key job, not a lot of work, actually no work at all if everything goes right."

Mari's head tilted to one side. "Huh?"

"Trust me, it will all make sense once I explain it. So, Mana, are you going to be joining us?"

"No, I've been through it before. Besides I got a phone call to make. Parents and stuff, you know how it is," Mana said as she walked out of the room.

"Right, right, I understand. Hey Mari, want to see something cool?"

"Um, sure, why not."

Jack pressed a hidden button on the inside of his desk, causing the entire thing, the chair, and part of the floor to be pushed all the way

"Whoa," it was all Mari could say.

"Had to pay for this with my own money. It was originally going to be an elevator stuffed into a closet, but going into a closet with a 12 year old girl was a bit too weird for my taste."

"Does that thing have to do with being 'in the closet'?" Mari asked.

"Err, no, no it does not."

"Oh, okay then. So, where does your desk elevator go?"

"To the bowls of hell itself!" Jack threw his head back and let out a fake sounding evil laugh.

/

"I'm just saying, Hel was originally Norse mythology, this base is more Greek mythology I think, and Greek version of Hel is Hades . . . I think," Mari said as she and Jack descended in the narrow elevator.

"It's not that big a difference. It's just different words for the same thing."

"It's not the same thing. Norse Hel was only for the people who didn't live or work in Valhalla while Hades was everyone. Also, Hades was a depressed dude, and Hel was a lady."

"You seem to know your mythology," Jack observed.

"I found a huge stack of books on various mythologies a while ago, it's very nifty stuff."

The elevator slowed to a stop, a soft beep signaling they had arrived at their destination.

The doors slid open to reveal a small and empty room. Almost every surface was as black as a starless night, all except for the wall directly across from them, which had giant cross of white gold in its center. The cross itself seemed to glow brightly, providing the only source of light in the room.

If Mari knew how to whistle she would have right then.

"Whoa."

"Mari, what I'm about to show and tell you cannot be so much as referenced to outside this room. Is that clear?"

"Uh, huh," Mari said nervously.

"Good, Mana has assured me you can be trusted, and I would hate for her to proven wrong. The IPEA is involved in more than helping to build giant robots; we are also fighting a war to save the soul of every human being in existence, and you my young friend have just been drafted."


	4. Chapter 4: now with less plot holes

Author's note: heh almost violated my terms of service there but anyways yeah, original draft of this chapter had some errors in it, which this rewrite takes care of. Now whatever Jack told Mari in the original version that he didn't tell her in this version is still as true as it was then, he just hasn't told her yet.

Apologies for any confusion that I might have caused

Chapter 4: Ghost Bears

Jack looked past Mari like he was lost in thought for a second before quickly turning his attention back to her.

"You know, for a twelve year old girl you got an impressive security clearance level," he said.

"Really?" Mari replied questioningly. She didn't know what he meant by that but it sounded important.

"Really, and Mana, rather insistently, personally vouched for you to be here. Why is that?" he asked rather pointedly.

Mari was rather confused by that. Why would Mana push for her when until yesterday she didn't even exist there? Of course, that boy had established some background for her a while before she arrived, so maybe she was pushing for her based on whatever record she had been given. That was not a comforting thought to her.

"Um, I don't know," Mari replied weakly.

Jack nodded. "Understandable, and expected. Now tell me, why do you want to be here?"

"To learn how to pilot an Evangelion, and save the world," Mari replied a bit more confidently.

"Hmm, what if the two conflict?" he asked.

"What?"

"What if saving the world requires you to never get to be an Evangelion pilot, never get to so much as set foot near one."

Mari blinked, she hadn't been expecting that. "Well...Yeah, I guess I wouldn't be a pilot then. It would suck yeah, really really suck, but that's something way more important than me piloting."

Jack seemed very pleased by that answer. "Good, good. You paused for a second, but you didn't argue. You'd be surprised at the number of people who would get argumentative over that question, I know I was. Okay, next question, Does the name Seele mean anything to you?"

Mari thought it over for a second; she couldn't recall her parents ever mentioning it except in one context. "It's a German word that means the same as the English word 'soul'."

"Okay, what about Gendo Ikari?"

That name she most certainly did recognize. "Yes, I know of him," she said bitterly.

"Oh?" Jack said, clearly not expecting that answer. "And what do you know about him?"

Most of what she knew about her grandfather was his effects on her dad. When he spoke of him, he would say the most hateful and bitter things, and rant for hours – often incoherently, while sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by empty cans – about how much he screwed up his life, among other things. That, naturally, was not something she could really bring up to Jack.

"Well, let's see: head of Nerv in Tokyo-3, was married to Yui Ikari, father of Shinji Ikari, is a total bastard from what I've heard, and his beard makes him look like a pedo, whatever that is."

"That's…interesting," Jack stated, still rather confused. "Especially the part about Shinji, how did you hear about him?"

Mari panicked. "Oh you know, overheard conversations. Parents start talking about work, they talk about a visitor from Tokyo-3's Nerv, next thing you know they're talking about how the Tokyo boss had abandoned his kid with his uncle right after his mom died."

"Uh huh," Jack replied skeptically. "Did you overhear your parents talking about work a lot before the accident?"

Mari felt like she'd just talked herself into a trap.

"Okay, what's with all these questions anyways?" Mari asked bluntly. "You said I had just been drafted into a war. I don't see how answering all these questions has anything to do with that."

"Fair enough. I'll be blunt with you Mari, I've been burned by a pilot in the past, the pilot of Unit-04. I thought I could trust him totally, and was about to let him in on some important secrets when I discovered he was actively working with, well, let's just say some very bad people. If hadn't found out the truth when I did I could have put the entire operation – hell, the entire world – at risk. I don't want to make that mistake again. I'm actually being a lot more lenient with you then I originally planned on. Mana really pushed for you."

"You're trying to save the world, right?" Mari asked.

"Yeah."

"And pilots are trained to save the world from the Angels, so why would a pilot be against what you're doing?"

Jack shrugged. "A good lie can led anyone astray, especially someone your age. Alright, one last question and then I'll start telling you why you're here. What would be better: humanity existing as extremely flawed and horrifically evil-prone individuals, or existing as part of one collective hive mind that is theoretically perfect and without flaw?"

"First one," Mari blurted out quickly. "Definitely the first one."

Jack was a bit taken aback.

"Okay, got to admit I wasn't expecting an actual answer for that question besides something to effect of, 'huh?'"

"Well, I understand what you're talking about."

_A lot better then you probably._

"That's not exactly something most twelve year olds understand."

"Then why did you ask?"

"Because I was planning on it explaining it to you, and . . . and, well, I'm just not good with kids. Well, in this situation at least. The fact that I have to depend on a kid to save the world in two different ways is just absurd to me. What's even more absurd is that I have to worry about being betrayed by a kid, _again_. The world hangs in the balance and the ones who can do the most to save or damn it haven't even entered puberty yet."

Jack sighed and put his face in his hands for a moment.

"Okay, I promised I'd start telling you the truth, so here it is. Mana and I work for IPEA. Officially IPEA is only involved in building, programming, and storing Evas, and in most cases we aren't even involved in the first two parts, Unit-05's a special case. Unofficially, things are a bit more complicated. You see, above us, above Nerv, is a group called Seele. Seele controls just about everything: governments, corporations, militaries, even the Holy Grail according to one report I saw. Anyways, Seele wants to bring about the end the world, just in a different way than the Angels want to."

Mari's mind went back to home, the blood red oceans, the blasted ruins of the city, the massive hole in the earth, the emptiness of it all. Was Seele the one that caused all that?

"The jist of it is that IPEA and its benefactors have a very vested interest in stopping Seele. They can't know about that, is that clear? You can never talk about this conservation with anyone at Nerv, not even other pilots, and especially not Kaji."

"Right, don't talk about it, got it," Mari stammered. "And I fully support what you're doing, a lot. Like a really really supportive….thingy. Okay, I don't know how to say it, but what you're doing is something I very much…support," Mari punched her head, she wanted to tell Jack how much she supported this, but she couldn't tell him exactly why she supported it, and she was having a difficult time finding words that didn't sound hollow even to her.

Jack smiled a bit. "Well, that's good to hear. As I was saying, as far as most of Seele is concerned we're just another lackey of theirs, so when the time comes they won't suspect that we'll have our own ace in the hole to screw up their plans. That's you; the other pilots are too out of our reach and won't know enough to stop it, or will be trying to make it happen. You'll know what to do when it's time though, and Mana and I will make sure to get you where you need to be."

"So, basically, you want me to be a badly placed wrench in their generator?" Mari asked with a smile.

"Yep, you're going to be one big spanner in the works for them if everything goes well. I got to say Mari, this conversation was kinda odd, but I think it went well. I know I didn't tell you a lot, but in the coming weeks and months I'll let you know more. You're going to have to let yourself out; I got something to take care of down here."

Mari left, hopeful, excited, but also very confused.

/

The elevator door opened with a soft hiss, and Mana stepped out to be greeted with the near blinding light of the open cross. She quickly pulled a pair of oversized sunglasses out of her back pocket and put them on, which brought the light down to bearable levels.

She then saw Jack sitting cross legged on the floor, staring at the contents of a large open security case.

"How do you spend so much time down here without going blind?" she asked.

Jack about jumped up, apparently caught unaware of Mana's entrance.

"Oh, it's just you," Jack said, relief filling his voice and his right hand sliding carefully away from his empty gun holster.

Mana glared at the hand. "Were you expecting someone else?"

"A little bit."

"So, did the meeting go poorly or something?"

"No actually, it went about as well as you said it would," Jack replied a bit sheepishly.

"I told you, her are records better than the Fifth's ever was," Mana said in a voice that just screamed 'told you so.'

"Almost too good," Jack said quietly.

"Oh don't start that again, you and I both know she's all we got. We can't exactly ask for a new pilot if we mess up with her, there aren't any other Evas left, and even if there are they're probably controlled directly by Seele."

"But if there's even a chance she might be working . . ."

"She isn't. I checked out her background. She lived in the middle of nowhere; both her parents are gone, so there isn't any emotional blackmail they could use on her, and even when they were around they weren't exactly the kind of people Seele would have any contact with. You don't trust her, fine. Monitor every e-mail and phone she sends and receives."

"Already done," Jack interjected.

"Oh, course you have, probably bugged her clothes or something. That just proves my point, you can very easily watch this girl like a hawk, if she does anything even slightly suspicious you'll be able to find out about it in seconds and stop it. You got your own puppet on a string, stop worrying that it's going to stab you in the hand."

Jack went back to looking at the contents of the case, mumbling something to himself the whole time.

"Jack, do you trust me?" Mana asked after almost a minute.

Jack looked up in surprise.

"Of course I do Mana, you know that. You're just about the only one I do trust at this point."

"Do you trust my judgment?"

"On everything except movies."

"Then trust my judgment on this."

"Fine, fine. I hope to God you know what you're doing."

"And I hope to God that staring at the key doesn't drive you insane, or brainwashes you, or something equally as nasty," Mana replied light heartedly.

"No, they ran studies on it, looking at its perfectly fine. Biting the Key of Nebuchadnezzar on the other hand is nearly lethal. This thing does not like teeth, or the human skeleton."

Mana raised an eyebrow. "Do I even want to know what the hell sort of testing was going when you discovered that little bit of info?"

Jack winced at the memory. "No, no you do not."

Mana walked behind Jack and leaned in to get a closer look at the object in question.

The case interior glowed with a soft light that highlighted its contents. The Key was suspended in amber or something similar to it, and the whole thing kept pinned to the center of the case with wire and brackets. The key itself looked like a miniature human nervous system, with the head replaced by a gold and white stylized piece that resembled an oversized, almost plastic looking, key of some sorts.

Mana let out a low whistle "Hard to believe such a little thing can be so dangerous."

"I know right?" Jack said, excitement filling his voice. "But all the records indicate that this thing is the guide post to human instrumentality. As long as we hold on to it, Seele can't start their plans."

"Think we can hold on to it?" Mana asked.

"No, not forever," Jack said sadly, "but hopefully long enough to actually do a bit of good with it."

/

Mari laid on top of her bed, listening to her old cassette player. Oddly enough the conversation with Jack was not at forefront of her mind.

_What was it?_ She wondered, trying hard to remember. It was only a few years ago and mom made a pretty big deal out of it, so why was she having such a hard time remembering?

Oh wait, now she remembered. She was six, or was it eight? Nine, she was definitely nine when it happened. Her parents had discovered a big box full of old DVDs, most of them of a show called _Power Rangers_. She loved it, mostly for the big monster battles, they were very similar to how she always pictured her parent's old battles, only with more spandex. Her mom liked it because it helped her learned English; dad always left the room when it was one for some reason.

/

For about two months she watched an episode almost every single morning. Then one day she got a totally awesome idea: she would make her own Megazord costume. First, she needed a still image of one to base it off of, she couldn't very well keep the TV paused the entire time she was making it – TV was only on for a few hours a day as it was, and her parents had shows they wanted to watch – and trying to do it from memory simply wasn't acceptable to Mari. So she tried to track down a toy of it, figuring she would grab one while during one of the trips down to the city ruins for supplies. Four trips later and she hadn't seen one trace of anything _Power Rangers_ related. Then on the next trip she discovered a box labeled '_Super Sentai_' which had exactly what she wanted, which confused her deeply.

Next she had to actually assemble it, which proved fairly easy. There were number of loose bits of plastic and fabric lying around that nobody paid any attention to, and anything she needed that she couldn't find at home she could very easily pick up in one of the ruins, although she had picked up so much junk that her parents probably thought she was developing a hoarding disorder. Once she had all the materials she was able to put it together fairly quickly, then it fell apart just as quickly. She spent a good deal more time and effort on the second one and it managed to actually hold together well during the test run. Then she put it in the closet, unsure of what to do with it.

The costume sat in the closet for about a week, then one night while Mari was getting ready for bed she heard her parents start to argue. She wasn't sure what the argument was about, she was barely able to make out her mom screaming something about potatoes and her dad yelling about "putting things in their proper place." Still, the arguing was loud enough that Mari knew sleep was going to be delayed an hour or two, or six. Looking around her room for something to do she caught a glimpse of the costume, sitting in her open closet. An idea began to form in Mari's brain.

Getting out would be a bit tricky, her bed was on the second floor but there was a pipe right underneath her window that went all the way down to the ground, she often used the pipe to leave the house when the fighting got bad, but never while carrying something as bulky as the costume. She had to take it apart and make trips, going so far as to grip the helmet with her teeth as she shimmied down the pipe. After quickly reassembling the costume she put it on and turned on a flashlight she grabbed in one of her trips and made her way out to the forest.

For a while she just wandered around forest, occasionally shining her light at spooky noises or weird rustling in the bushes until she finally came across it. At first she thought it was a toy, perhaps a stuffed animal of some sort, then it moved and cried out. It was a bear cub, an adorable little brown bear cub. She stared at for a second, cooing over how cute it was, then she had another idea. She could play with it! It would totally make an awesome monster, sure she didn't have the time or material to make it its own costume and it was a bit on the small side but it could totally work.

They played for what seemed to be hours to Mari. The cub seemed unwilling to play at first but after a while it seemed to start enjoying it, then Mari caught sight of another flashlight panning through the trees.

"Mari? Mari, were are you?" her mother called. "Mari, for crying out loud, you can't keep doing this. Your father and I will soundproof your room so you don't have to hear us arguing, if you promise to stop doing this. We won't even make you help if you don't want to... Oh, there you are," she caught sight of Mari standing a clearing, her head tilting to one side as she caught sight of her costume.

"What...what the hell are you wearing?" she asked.

"My costume" Mari said matter-of-factly.

Movement to side of her caught her mom's attention, as soon as she shined her light on it her mom's face turned ghostly white and she looked more scared then Mari had ever seen her before.

"Mari," she said in a very panicked by still very hushed voice. "Come with me, we got to go. Now."

"Why?" Mari asked as she turned to where her mom had pointed the flashlight.

In between two trees Mari saw a much larger bear sitting there, looking directly at her.

"Oh, that's why," Mari said. "But it's just sitting there, looking pretty chill."

"That is an escaped zoo bear!" Her mother said, getting rather frantic. "Bears do not do chill, especially when you are freaking playing with their cub! Get over here now!"

Suddenly the mother bear let out a frighteningly loud growl. Mari shook in terror, the mother bear growled again and looked like it was about to charge any second now. Mari froze, unsure of what to do. Then she felt a massive tug on her shoulder as her mom threw her out of the way of the bear.

Before she could even react to the massive pain she was now feeling from having her shoulder dislocated her mom had scooped her up in her arms and made a mad dash for the house. Within a minute she was in her bed again while mom shouted at dad to "Get the big gun."

She didn't get to watch _Power Rangers_ again after that night.

/

Her mother probably would have had a similar reaction if she was here now. She would have dragged her away from all the conspiracies, Angels, and big burly Russian men that could bullseye a target with a hatchet while doing a backflip, but she wasn't, so she couldn't.

_Oh Mari, what have you gotten yourself into? s_he thought. _I was supposed to just be piloting the Evangelion and fighting Angels, and yet here I am, wrapped up in a super conspiracy and trying to protect a key which is somehow the most important object on the planet. This... This is going to be a lot harder than I thought it was, isn't it?_

A knock at the door interrupted Mari's thoughts.

"Come in," Mari muttered as she flicked off her cassette player.

Mana entered the room.

"Wanna get some dinner?" she asked. "My treat."

/

They were in the largest of Bethany's three cafeterias, and even though it was a bit past dinner time for most people aboard it was still pretty busy and loud.

"Something wrong with your food?" Mana asked, noticing that Mari was just staring at her cheeseburger and waffle fries.

"No, it's just, I've never had a cheeseburger," Mari explained.

"Never had a cheeseburger? That's just sad," Mana lamented.

"You seem kinda quiet," Mana observed. "Did Jack's secret squirrel stuff freak you out or something?"

"His what?" Mari gave her a confused looked.

Mana leaned in closer and whispered. "You know, the stuff we aren't supposed to talk about outside that room."

"Oh that . . . kinda," it was actually more than 'kinda,' but Mari didn't feel like going into how overwhelmed she felt now and how all the pressure Mana, Jack, and she herself had put on her made her feel she was going to break and go screaming home, only she couldn't go home because home was over a decade and a half in the future!

"You want my advice?" Mana asked. "Don't think about, Jack was just trying to make sure he could trust you, and maybe freak you out a little, he likes to do that for some reason."

"Don't think about it? The whole of humanity depends on me, depends on us. How do you not think about _that_?" Mari asked.

"You see that lady over there?" Mana asked, pointing with her fork to a blond woman a few tables away wearing a pale tan uniform.

"Yeah."

"That lady," Mana explained, "is in charge of a team that debugs Unit-05's software, if she messes up even a little, odds are you aren't going to go five feet in combat without its whole system crashing. So if she messes up, we all die. Does she look stressed too you?"

Mari looked at the woman; she seemed to be eating her pasta dish pretty calmly.

"No."

"Exactly!" Mana exclaimed. "Now, look at that guy over there," she pointed to a man with a shaved head standing in the cafeteria checkout line.

"That guy is a tank driver. If the Angel ever breaks loose he's going to be trying to slow it down while Nerv preps you for launch. Odds are he, his crew, and every other tank crew here isn't going to so much as slow down the Angel before it completely destroys them, and he knows that, but does he let it get to him? No. The world depends on us yes, but it also depends on just about everyone here, and a lot of people across the world. So we're keeping a massive secret to ourselves, so are a lot of the Russian and Nerv higher ups, but they keep going about their normal lives like nothings wrong. You can't let things like that stress you out every single day. For one thing you would probably go nuts before you even got to do the thing you were so stressed about – or worse, something awful happens and your life really does give you something to make you miserable every day – and you've just wasted your best days stressing. Just try to take it one day at a time, don't totally forget about the future though, just push it into the back of your mind for the most part. You got a busy few years ahead of you, it would be such a waste to spend what free time you do have stressing over something you have no control over."

"That . . . makes sense," Mari replied.

"Of course it does," Mana said smugly. "Oh, I have a curiosity question for you, if you're okay with that."

"Sure," Mari said, uncertain over what Mana was going to ask.

"You ever hear of the Hedgehog's Dilemma?"

"Nooooo."

"Good," Mana replied, looking somewhat relieved. "Always hated the thing. Do me a favor, if anyone ever tries to push it on you, punch them in the stomach for me. Anyways, what I was going to say is 'don't worry about other people's opinion of yourself.' I mean, like I said earlier, you need to not act like a crazy person, but don't over-think it or anything. Most people probably won't care, and anyone important to you should probably be willing to push past whatever metaphorical spines you have at some point in your relationship. Sure your general weirdness might get you a few enemies down the line, but, hey, you can't please everyone. In fact, trying to please everyone is probably going to end up just pissing even more people off."

/

"Hey, I got an idea," Mana said a while later. "It's a kinda stupid idea, but I think it will definitely take your mind off things. Meet me at Helipad-4 after your classes in the morning."

"Why?" Mari asked.

"Just trust me, it will be fun."

/

When Mari got to the helipad she discovered Mana was already waiting there in a small helicopter, which in turn took them to the nearby town. Once it dropped them off they walked a short distance through the drab little town to a parking garage that looked like it had seen better days, much better days. Hell, most of the parking garages back in the ruins where in better condition then this thing.

Mari followed Mana into the lower levels, all the while checking the walls and ceiling for any sign it was about to collapse. Finally they reached a locked door, and Mana produced a key.

The room on the other side proved to be in surprisingly good condition, especially compared to the rest of the building. It was empty save for a few cars, all very nice looking.

"Bethany provides this space for higher-ups to leave there cars while they're assigned there," Mana explained. "Most don't take it because we're in the middle of freaking Siberia, but, hey, I had purchased the damn thing before I knew I was being shipped here, and I didn't have any other place to store it. Here we are," she pointed to a dark blue two door car that seemed to be missing its top.

"I was going to get a Land Cruiser, but then I thought, 'Fu . . . Screw it, I got money, let's blow it on something fancy.'"

"Why do people keep holding in their swearing when they're around me?" Mari asked.

"Because that's what we're supposed to do around twelve year old girls," Mana explained.

"Oh," was all Mari could say.

"Of course, I'm about to teach a twelve year old girl to drive, so me saying that is a bit on the hypocritical side."

"Yeah...Wait, what?"

"Well it's a pretty empty town, so as long you play it safe we should be OK."

Unbeknownst to Mana a small smile had appeared on Mari's face.

_/_

Mana regretted many things, many many things. Her all time biggest regret was actually what brought her to Bethany Base, but right then that regret was buried deep in the back of her mind – very deep, right next to her grocery list from two years ago and that uncomfortable encounter she had with Kaji. Right then the regret that was biggest in her mind was the most recent: trying to teach Mari how to drive.

It seemed innocent enough. Sure Mari punched out that doctor, but she didn't strike her as a speed freak – in fact, that golf cart seemed to a make her a bit uneasy – and besides the car was a manual, she would probably spend most of her time driving trying to figure how to switch gears, or so Mana thought. She was wrong, oh so very very wrong.

Mari had somehow figured out the clutch within two minutes, and was now barreling down a thankfully deserted – mostly – stretch of highway at a speed Mana hadn't thought possible for her car. To make matters worse Mana was 90 percent sure they were on the wrong side of the road. Scratch that, 100 percent sure, there was a very large truck rapidly approaching them.

"Truck!" Mana screamed desperately.

"I see it," Mari said eagerly, which freaked Mana out even more.

"Truck!" She repeated in a desperate attempt to convey 'Get out of the way of the truck before you kill us all' in the few words her panic filled mind would allow her.

At the last possible second Mari swerved out of the way of the truck, laughing like a small child watching a funny movie.

_This girl is going to kill me_,Mana thought as Mari exited the Highway, using the on-ramp, and drove back into town

_Correction, this girl is killing me, right here right now._

Mari made a a series of dangerously sharp turns through narrow back alleys, scaring a number of stay cats and homeless people, before finally turning into the hidden away entrance of the parking garage, taking up two spaces as she parked.

"Oh thank God, you're actually done!" Mana exclaimed in the same tone of voice someone might use if the supersonic jet they were on just narrowly avoided crashing into the ocean at Mach 1.1.

"Well, it's almost time for my afternoon sitting in the tube time," Mari pointed to the dashboard clock.

"O, right," Mari said, suddenly very grateful that that test was an everyday thing right now.

"Anyways, thanks for the lesson, it was fun," Mari said cheerfully as she got out of the car.

"Yeah. Fun," Mana said in between heavy breaths. "Now, if you'll excuse me, that 'fun' ride aged me about twenty years, so I have to go back to my room and prepare for menopause."

/

Mana avoided Mari as best she could for the next few weeks, mostly because every time she saw her after the 'lesson' Mana heard truck horns blaring and old men screaming at her in Russian. But she had time enough to recover, and for some reason she vaguely missed her. Besides, all she was doing was delivering her news – safe, boring, non-life threatening news.

Mana knocked on Mari's door. "Mari? Are you in there," she asked.

"Yeah," Mari answered. "Let yourself *errgh* in. Oh, come on you, _Du Hurensohn_. Move, freaking move!"

_Oh, I got a bad feeling about this, _Mana thought to herself as she entered the room.

She discovered Mari in her bathroom, half underneath the sink, with a number of pipes and fittings scattered around the floor around her.

"Mari, what are you doing?" Mana asked.

Mari pulled herself out from under the sink.

"The sink was broken. I'm fixing it," Mari explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Mana put her head in her hand.

"You know we got repair guys specifically for this kind of thing?" she said.

"You do?" Mari asked, rather surprised by the information.

"Yes," Mana sighed.

"Oh, well, I didn't know, and I thought it was going to be an easy fix. but this place has damn strange plumbing. Really damn strange plumbing."

"It's okay, don't worry about it. I'll call someone on the way out," Mana said reassuringly.

"Are you going somewhere?" Mari asked

"We," Mana corrected, "are going to down to Unit-05. IPEA has finally gotten enough of it built so that we can begin preliminary testing. Nothing too exciting, just checking various arm and leg simulations so we know that whatever we built will actually, you know, move. Not very exciting, I know, but, hey, it beats sitting hours in the tube."

"I don't know," Mari said wistfully. "Sure it's kind of boring, but the LCL smells so nice, so very nice. Like a field of flowers on a bright sunny day, with a gladiatorial match going on in the middle of it."

Mana stared at Mari for a second.

"What?" Mari asked.

"Nothing, just nothing," Mana sighed. "Let's just go."

/

"All right, Mari," came an unfamiliar accented female voice through the intercom. "The testing rig we have Unit-05 hooked up to is designed to simulate any possible stress the cybernetics might put on both the EVA and you, so even though the nerve connections are deadened to an extent and your synch ratio is being suppressed, accidents like falling over or breaking the Unit-05s arm will still probably hurt."

"Got it," Mari said as she tried to scratch under the helmet they'd stuck on her.

"Hey, am I going to be wearing this helmet when I actually do pilot this thing in combat?"

"Probably," the woman responded in a rather emotionless tone. "The helmet was really a last minute thing, we had difficulty wiring in the normal Evangelion visual feeds into the system so it was either this or piloting blind."

"Oh, bummer," Mari said, somewhat dejected. "Well, can you at least make this thing less itchy?"

"We'll try," the woman's voice had hint of sympathy in it. "All right: Configuration 1, Test 1. Start."

Mari's helmet switched on. A blocky off color cityscape appeared in front of her. She looked down to see her simulated limbs. Her arms were skinny little things with four clawed hands. Her legs, in contrast, were big, and thick, and the feet were more like solid bricks than actual feet.

"All right, first try the hands and arms," The women commanded.

Mari pumped her hands several times, the simulations mimicked the motions, but more slowly and delayed by a fraction of a second.

"Hands, hands are rather sluggish. Same with the arms." Mari said as she pushed on the controls. "Very sluggish. Feels like I'm pressing through tar here or something."

"All right, that isn't unexpected. Try out the legs now," the women ordered.

Somehow the legs were even more sluggish, Mari had to constantly think – _Walk, walk damn you – _and each step was slow and exaggerated.

"This . . . this isn't working," Mari grunted. "Not working at . . . Oh crap."

Mari felt her right leg lock up in midstep, she desperately tried to maintain her balance, but the EVA refused to cooperate, crashing face first into the ground with a simulated thump.

Mari tried to push herself up off the ground. She managed to get herself almost to her knees before she started hear cracking noises. She looked to right to see huge cracks had developed in the arm and hand, a second later they shattered. Another second later the left arm shattered, sending Mari crashing back down back down to the ground.

"_Du Hurensohn_!" Mari shouted in rage.

"Calm down Mari, it's just the first configuration. We got plenty of other, more reliable, configurations to test," the woman assured her.

"It freaking hurt!" Mari protested. "I mean, I know you said it might hurt, but I wasn't expecting to feel my arms shattered."

"Nether were we. Alright, configuration 1 was a bust; reset, and load up the next one."

The pain in her arms suddenly vanished as Mari felt herself being rotated upright and her helmet reset back to the cityscape.

"All right: Configuration 2, Test 1."

This time her arms were much more normally proportioned with blocky five fingered hands.

"Let's try the hands again," Mari said. "Well, this time they appear to be moving better, still sluggish but not as bad."

"Good," the lady said, rather pleased by the news. "Hopefully the rest of the arms work as well."

Mari's left hand felt like it had suddenly been dipped in boiling hot water. She looked down to see fire graphics covering the hand.

"Um, my hand just burst into the flames. Is it supposed to do that?" Mari asked.

"No, no it is not," the lady sighed.

/

Mana and Jack poured through the results of the first few configuration tests.

"Let's see what we got here," Mana said, mostly to herself. "First test: arms and legs stiff and unresponsive, arms too fragile and legs suffered multiple system failures when moving. Second test: left hand rapidly overheated and the legs were totally unresponsive. Third test: Both legs rapidly overheated and the hands fell off any time they tried to grip anything. Tests four through seven: arms and legs were all slow and suffered delayed reactions that went up to three seconds in difference between pilots motions and the Evangelion's motions. Test 8: every limb rapidly overheated and then exploded, violently."

Mana looked down the rest of the list and sighed deeply.

"Jack, do you think IPEA as a whole is incompetent, or is it just the people who work here that are?"

"We aren't incompetent," Jack said while sipping a cup of coffee.

"Then we just need to fire everyone in the cybernetics division, and possibly the people who programmed the simulation. Because at the rate we're going all we're going to have is a pissed off twelve year old girl and a Eva that's about as fast as a dial-up computer trying to download a movie," Mana responded dejectedly.

"The Nerv boys have always said that Evangelions wouldn't handle those types of cybernetics very well, I had hoped they were just annoyed at us messing around with one of 'their' machines, but it seems they were actually right for once."

Jack paused for a moment.

"Well, we still got the wheeled configurations to test, and we could always trying using that forced synchro equipment for the arms," he said.

Mana groaned.

"That equipment eats up battery life like a hog, we will be lucky if the battery lasts for more than three minutes disconnected, and even if it does the equipment's not going to hold out the entire time. So for the last minute or so of the battle Mari's going to have to headbutt the Angel to death, or something."

"We could always attach battery packs," Jack suggested.

Mana shook her head. "No. We could try, but they will probably say something about how 'Bethany's entire Angel defense system is designed to supply constant power to the Eva, except for the top layer, but there is no reason a battle with the Third Angel would ever last that long up there, so it doesn't really need something as expensive as extra battery packs.' And you want to go with wheel systems too, have you looked at some of those designs?"

"A bit," Jack answered.

"Then you saw how much work putting them in would involve? There's a reason the heads told us they were a last resort even though are original projections showed they would probably be better then the leg designs. Rewiring the cockpit alone is going to set us back a few months, and we got to get the Russians to redo the Evangelion power supply system, and we got figure out what kind jet or rocket engine would actually be able to provide remotely stable lift without blowing up. *Sigh* Unfortunately, it does look like they are really are only option at this point. Someone grab Mari and that Russian lady, whatever her name was."

"Galina." Jack answered.

"That's the one, get them both and tell them to get back to the testing rig, we got a few wheels to test."

/

Mari was bored, very bored. She hadn't thought it was possible to be this bored in the pilot seat of Evangelion, but here she was sitting in the pilot seat, bored out of her mind. She was on her way to her gym class when they told her to go back to the rig and test out a few more legs that they promised would actually work, and not explode underneath her. Mari hated the explosions, which again was something Mari hadn't though possible. Mari liked explosions, not that she ever got to see them in real life – well, except for that one boat crash, but that didn't really count – but the ones she saw on TV looked really cool.

"It's going to be about another 5 minutes, Mari," the woman who was apparently named Galina said over the intercom. "Getting the rig set up for the new legs is taking us a little longer than expected."

"Okay," Mari said wearily.

She slouched back in her seat. If this took much longer she was going to miss gym class, and gym class was aactually kinda fun. Well, except for the angry Russian man who kept on pushing her to run faster and climb farther even through she was already...

_Wait, what was that?_Mari thought to herself as she was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that she wasn't alone in the cockpit.

She looked around frantically, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was in there with her, but she saw nothing, not even a odd shadow

_Well that was weird._

Mari then heard a low, almost savage, growl that radiated throughout the whole cockpit.

"Did, um, anyone else hear that?" Mari asked.

"Hear what?" Galina asked.

"Um, nothing, never mind," Mari said nervously.

_Oh God, there's a ghost in here with me, or worse, a ghost bear or something._

Another growl, this time it sounded annoyed, very annoyed.

_Okay then, maybe it's not a ghost bear, that's a relief. Wait, you can hear me?_

A single soft grunt.

_Um, that's a yes, right?_

Another grunt.

_Not big on words I take it? That's okay. I seem to remember dad mentioning, well not so much mentioning as drunkenly ranting about it and various other subjects, that Evangelions have souls. Are you Unit-05's soul?_

It responded with something more akin to a sigh in the back of Mari's mind then a grunt.

_Cool! So um, sorry about all your limb problems. I remember when I broke my arm, when I fell off a tree, hurt like a mother let me tell you. Of course, I imagine this probably all feels much worse then a broken arm, but hey, look at the bright side, they're going to give you legs with wheels on them, won't that be exciting?_

Silence.

_Yes? No? Maybe so? Nothing? Are you done talking for now or something?_

More silence greeted her, and Mari felt alone in the cockpit again.

_Oh, so um, we will talk later, I guess._

_/_

"It looks awesome!"

"It looks like a crab."

Mari and Mana stared at Unit-05. There was still a bit of work to do, but the people who worked on it said it was pretty finished, and this was the first time Mari had seen it with it's new limbs attached. She was personally very impressed with it, Mana was . . . less so.

Oh, she was happy that it was actually up and working, but it just looked so ridiculous to her. The paint scheme, the skinny arms with pincers for hands, it all looked kinda comical to her. The legs were okay, far better then any other available alternative, but still, they were a reminder of the fact that this thing, no matter how much work she had put into it, was a crude, outdated, patch work version of a regular Evangelion. A last minute stop gap that IPEA, Jack, and others were expecting to change the world.

"It doesn't look like a crab," Mari protested.

"Do you even know what a crab looks like?" Mana asked.

"Kinda, but I know they don't have drills like that," Mari pointed to the large thing Unit-05 was holding in it's left arm, which besides its claws was really the only weapon the thing had right then.

"It's a lance," Mana corrected.

"It's a drill," Mari insisted. "Lances don't have spinning bits, that has spinning bits."

"Whatever," Mana sighed, trying to remember exactly why the lance had spinning parts on it.

"Hey, Mana, do you think I'll actually get to pilot this thing?"

"Personally, I hope this thing never sees a second of combat, but odds are . . ."

Mana shot a quick glance at Kaji, who was standing at the other end of the observation room, chatting with some higher up Nerv woman.

"You two will see combat soon enough."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Mari Strikes!

Two years, that's how long Mari had been at Bethany. Well, technically in a week it would be a full two years, but was nitpicking. It was also about six months since Eva Unit-05 – sorry, _Provisional _Unit-05 – was declared fit for combat, not that she got to really pilot it or anything. No, the most she's gotten to do was pilot 'simulations' of it in 'simulated' combat, and even doing that was rare.

Most of her time was spent doing schoolwork, working out, and, worst of all, studying the schematics for various Evangelions. Spending hours every day with Mana or Jack studying their weapon systems, the electrical systems, the various little commands you could activate in combat that could do some impressively weird things to the Eva.

Not that she could use them, since apparently almost every single one of them would screw with Unit-05's arms and legs. There was also the fact that using them risked both physical and mental contamination, but that wasn't exactly a major concern for Mari.

Most of what she looked at she barely understood on the best of days, and on the worst of days they might as well have been written in a foreign language. Scratch that, she was pretty good at understanding foreign languages, her time her gave her a pretty good understanding of Russian

Well, mostly the swear words she picked up from Russian soldiers stationed on the base, but she understood enough polite Russian to carry on a decent conversation.

What was worse was that she didn't understand why she was learning all this. Why did she need to learn how to pilot Unit-01 blindfolded? Why did a teenage girl need to know how to disarm a grown man? What was so important about knowing NERV-00's layout by memory? Well, large chunks of it, there was only so much she could memorize without forgetting other chunks or going insane. The hell what Jack and Mana planning for her to do once she left Bethany?

And she _was_ leaving Bethany, that much was clear. They never directly said it, but she knew that both of them were expecting something to happen – probably an angel attack, hopefully an angel attack. God, how Mari wanted an angel attack.

A rather morbid thought all things considered, but it had been two years and she was bored … and lonely.

Mana was nice, Jack was too, some of the time, but she was missing her parents. She didn't miss having no one else to talk to besides them, and having to put up with their fights – well, if she was being honest with herself it wasn't putting up with so much as running away from – but she really missed them personally. Their stories, her dad's cooking, helping her mom in the garden, taking walks with them in the countryside, the little things like that.

Luckily, once the Third Angel tries to break out and dies she would be sent to Tokyo-3, and get to see them again. Well not exactly them, she knew that, but it was close enough in Mari's mind.

Her move out of Bethany had to happen soon, she imagined. The Angels had begun their assault on Tokyo-3. Three Angels already had fought and died against her father and Rei, and according to Mana the angel here was getting more and more difficult to keep restrained. The Time of Heroes had started, and she was going to be a part of it, just as soon as she could get off that rock.

Mari tossed in her bed and looked at the clock. 5:30 AM, probably time to get up. Mana mentioned they had something special planned for her this morning.

Mari groaned. Anytime they had something special planned for her it meant they had something really freaking hard they wanted her to attempt, except for the driving lesson, that was awesome. Sadly, Mana had rather strongly refused to take her out again, so had everyone else when asked, saying that had been 'warned' about her driving.

Mari shuffled to the bathroom, catching a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror.

She looked different, not a whole lot different, but it was noticeable all the same. Puberty had hit her about a year into her stay. She hadn't been caught completely off guard by it, her mother had warned her about it when she was young, so she found it more annoying than anything.

None of her old clothes fit anymore, either they were too short for her now or they were too uncomfortably tight to wear. They were just clothes, not even very good clothes. A lot of them were just anything remotely fitting that she could find before anymore of the clothing stores' roof fell down, but on some level she just liked them more.

A knock on the door.

Damnit! She hadn't even had a chance to shower yet, and she got up early! What the frak, Mana?

"Hold your horses!" Mari shouted angrily.

She opened the door to see Mana there, looking rather tired herself.

"Did I catch you on a bad day?" Mana teased sleepily.

Mari glared at her. "No, it's just, why so damn early?"

Mana shrugged. "Jack's orders, be luckily he hasn't woken you up at the three in the morning with a bucket of cold water."

"… You guys are weird."

"Says the girl who preached about the virtues of communism to a group of foreign Nerv employees."

"Well, I thought I was supposed to. No one told me that Russia wasn't communist anymore."

"The fact that the Soviet Union fell before you were born should have meant we didn't need to."

"Well… well . . ." Mari was at a loss for words. "Anyways, what's this special thing you got planned for me?"

"Oh, it's nothing really, just video of an Angel fight. Probably going to be very boring, in fact you should just go back to bed, and I'll get Jack to cancel it."

Mari grabbed Mana's arm in an iron grip. "Take me to the video. NOW!"

/

This was AWESOME! Not as awesome as actually piloting would be, but this was still about the most awesome thing she'd ever seen. She was watching video footage taken from a number of different security cameras around Tokyo-3 of Unit-01's fight with the Fifth Angel. Shamshel, Mana had called it, although Mari had no idea where that name came from.

The Angel was far weirder looking then she expected. With whip-like arms that seemed to be made out of light and that only vaguely looked solid. Weirdest of all to her was that its rib cage stuck out fully, empty and even seemed to move during combat like demented little limbs. It was creepy yet awesome at the same time.

However the Angel was not thing she focused on the most while watching the video, that honor belonged Unit-01, her father's Eva. He fought like she always imagined. Sure he came close to losing at a couple of points, but he never gave up, and even managed to save a couple of kids in the process. Whatever problems her father had, charging that thing armed with nothing more than a knife took a gigantic amount of courage and cemented her position that he was a hero – or at least his past counterpart was, although her father likely had the exact same fight so it applied to him as well.

Jack switched off the giant TV she had been watching the footage on.

"Now, could you tell me what the pilot did wrong during combat?" he asked.

The question struck Mari as absurd, like he had just asked her to find the square root of a stuffed fish.

Mari tilted her head. "Wrong? He beat the Angel, and even managed to save people in the process. The city isn't wrecked and the Angel's dead, so what's the problem?"

Jack responded with a low-pitched hum.

"What?"

"I didn't say anything."

"No, but you hmm-ed like my mom did when she caught me listening to K-Pop."

Jack raised an eyebrow.

"Don't judge me," Mari said defensively.

"Too late. Anyways you weren't wrong, you weren't exactly right either."

"Pardon?"

"Well, your priorities are in the right place, but your…"

Jack's cell phone interrupted him.

"Jack here… Wait, we got approved for _what_ now? But I thought they said we were too low priority for that?"

He pulled away the phone for a second, quietly muttering something to himself, but quickly returning the phone back to his face.

"You know, we just spent over a year rewiring the station to work with Unit-05, and now they want us to replace it."

_Replace it? Why would they replace it? Are they replacing me as well?_

Fear gripped Mari.

"Well, luckily Mari's been trained for normal controls so we won't have to waste time getting her up to speed."

Mari let out a loud sigh of relief.

"But still that's a pain in the ass. Did they give a reason why they're doing this? Of course they didn't, that would be too easy. No, no, I'll tell her."

Jack closed his cell phone with a sigh.

"Well, as you probably overheard, Unit-05 is going to be replaced. The Chinese base lost funding, or something, and we've apparently been given a large enough budget to actually afford to maintain a production model. This puts us in a bit of predicament, actually. The thing won't arrive for a few weeks, and we should be spending that time deactivating Unit-05 and getting it ready for the graveyard, but that would leave us a uncomfortably large window where we have no working Eva again, and I don't think anyone here would be willing to deal with that a second time – especially not with the other Angels awakening – but we couldn't handle two active EVAs for any length of time."

"Maybe we should just refuse it then?" Mari suggested.

Jack laughed at that.

"My ass would be fired so hard if I even suggested that. Unit-05's the black sheep of the Eva family, and frankly the IPEA's annoyed that it's the only Eva it really has any control over. With the Third Angel conversations a bust, a regular Evangelion at this point is more then we could have hoped for. Of course, knowing our luck it's probably rigged to explode or something."

/

"The hell is that?" Mana stared at little deep blue wire, one wire out of thousands upon thousands of wires in this part of the Evangelion alone, and normally one undamaged wire wouldn't be something worth of any note. The problem was that this wire wasn't here the last time Mana helped performed maintenance on the area surrounding the entry plug.

Mana was sure it hadn't been there last time. She spent the better part of the last three hours re-checking the schematics and maintenance reports to make sure of it, but every check told her the same thing, there was one more wire here then there was supposed to be.

Evangelions had been known to do odd things in the past. Their eyes would follow a person around the room, they would move even when they had no power, they would occasionally eat the souls of the people working on it, but growing new wires? That would be a new one.

An unpleasant thought crept into Mana's mind. _Sabotage_, that struck her as the most likely explanation. Bethany and Unit-05 had always been at the center of a massive power struggle between IPEA and Nerv, the recent announcement of Unit-05 being replaced didn't helped things.

The wire was probably part of some scheme to embarrass IPEA and possibly force the cancellation of the replacement, but of course she had to actually find what the other end was connected to before she could even begin to try to confirm that.

That proved more difficult than expected. While the wire was hanging out in the opening in the one spot she found it, it was much more hidden further down, burying itself it different wire bundles, cooling units, and whatever it could hide it in.

After about six hours and three dead ends she finally found where the wire led to, a little black box. She almost missed it at first; it had been hidden amongst a group of similarly colored units that held some of Unit-05's many multi-core processors. These processors in particular were in charge of handling the programming instructions for the…Self…Destruct…Mechanism

_Oh, you clever clever boy, so that's how it was going to play out originally? Interesting. Well we can't have that happening, now can we?_

_/_

Bethany smelled the same no matter where Mari was in it. Oh, sure the cafeterias were filled with the scents of meat being cooked, various spices, and whatever the soup of the day was, and when she stepped out on to the roof she was awash with the smell of sea salt and rust, but underneath all that there was one scent that all of them had in common. It was a strange mix of metal, oil, sweat, and distrust. She wasn't sure exactly how distrust had a smell, but it did. Smelled kinda like walnuts.

Distrust was something Mari found odd, not bad necessary, just something she still wasn't exactly used to, and it was everywhere. IPEA didn't trust Nerv, the Russian military didn't trust either one, Jack didn't trust anyone except Mana. Yet they somehow managed to work together: thousands of people who trusted each other about as far they could throw each other, and yet they worked together, and even managed to have polite conversations.

The numbers alone still kinda blew her mind. In this hallway alone she'd seen dozens pass by her in the past few minutes, and that wasn't even fraction of the base's population, and the base itself compared to world… Mari couldn't even begin to fully wrap her mind around that.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Kaji walking down the hall and waving her down.

"Mari, I've been looking for you. Do you have a moment?" he asked.

"Maybe," Mari said uncertainly. "What do you want?"

She'd been given very specific instructions on how to interact with how to interact with Kaji. The jist of it being 'don't.'

"Actually, she doesn't."

Mari looked behind her to see Mana walking down the hall with a huge black garbage bag slung over her shoulder.

"She has a special class she has to get to. The higher ups want to make sure she's ready for the new Eva when it arrives."

"Mana, what a lovely surprise," Kaji said smoothly. "What's with the bag?"

"Oh, just a bit of scrap I'm taking to the recycling center. Mari, shouldn't you get to your class?"

Mari stared at her blankly for a second before Mana glared at her intently.

"Oh . . . Oh! Yeah, I should definitely get to that class, wouldn't want to be late."

Mari gave Mana a confused look before running off.

"Well, that was odd," Kaji deadpanned.

"Indeed. So, dare I ask what you wanted to talk to Mari about?"

Kaji was elusive. "Oh, you know, just wanted help with a surprise party I was planning."

"From Mari?"

He shrugged. "Wanted an outside perspective."

Mana raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Uh huh. Well, I'm going to tell you the same thing I told you when you asked me out."

"Maybe when I'm single?"

**"**What, no damnit. Okay, I'll tell you what I told Musashi Strasberg. She's already spoken for, so back off."

**"**She's a pilot, technically IPEA shouldn't have their hands on her to begin with, much less lay total claim to her."

**"**Yeah, technically we aren't supposed to, but we both do a lot of things we technically aren't suppose to do, and yet we do them anyways even though technically both of us should probably be in prison. Besides, don't you have a plane to catch?"

A flash of mild surprise briefly appeared on Kaji's face, he quickly suppressed it and casually checked his watch.

**"**No, not for another day."

**"**Oh, well don't wait too long. Airport security can be a bit of a bitch."

/

**"**What was that all about?" Mari wondered as she wandered aimlessly down a hallway. Jack specifically said she didn't have to take a new class for the eva. Her next few classes had been cancelled for the day due to some electrical explosion in the classroom, and Mana knew about that last part because she was the one who told her about it. So why did she send her away?

Mari shrugged **"**Ehh, probably some adult problem. Adults always have a lot of problems. Now, I probably should get to…"

Mari stopped; she didn't have anything to get too. With her next two classes cancelled she had a free period of almost three hours. It had been a long time since Mari had that amount of free time and wasn't about ready to collapse from exhaustion.

Of course that raised the question, what exactly would she do with the time? As far as she knew there wasn't much in the way of fun things to do around Bethany. Mana was probably busy with whatever she was doing with Kaji so she couldn't hang out with her, and Jack didn't do hanging out.

She could go back to her room and read, or maybe watch TV, but that just seemed like a waste to Mari. Who knew how long it would be before she actually had free time again…

Mari's thoughts were interrupted by a rather foul smell, like someone had burned their breakfast and then left it out for a week.

Mari turned towards the smell and saw a confused looking woman walking her way. From the neck down she looked fine, wearing the very neat and clean, pale, tan uniform that most Nerv employees tended to wear, but from the neck up was a far different story. Her blonde hair was unkempt and greasy looking, her eyes were sunken in and bloodshot, and her face was an almost deathly pale.

The woman caught Mari staring at her and quickly approached her.

**"**Um, excuse me, would you happen to know where Nerv's main office is?" the women asked.

Mari shrugged. "Sorry, no."

**"**Of course you don't," the woman muttered. "Spent the last three years working my ass off to get here, and it's all going to for not because I'm going to be fired for not being able to freaking find my office, can't even find a bloody map or a directory."

Mari stood there awkwardly for a second as the woman leaned against the wall and muttered to herself before finally speaking up.

**"**So, um, do you need help finding your office?" Mari asked.

The woman looked Mari over for a second.

**"**No offense, but what's a teenager even doing here?"

**"**I'm the pilot," Mari said with a confident smile as she tried desperately to ignore the woman's smell.

The woman slapped her head. "Of course you are! Sorry, I occasionally forget I live in world where the most powerful weapons to ever exist need dorky teenagers to use them, no offense kid."

**"**Um, none taken," Mari replied. **"**So, do you need help?" she repeated.

**"**No, thank you, but no. There's no sense in getting you just as lost as me," the woman said as she began walking away.

**"**Oh, okay. Well, would you want get lunch together sometime or something?" Mari asked.

The lady stopped and turned. "Why?"

**"**I don't know, you're just the first new person I've really talked to in a while – I mean, outside of work, and schooling, and stuff."

The lady glared at Mari in confusion. "What, you don't have any friends from home you can email, or write, or something?"

Mari scratched her head nervously. "Not really, no. Well, I hang out with Mana sometimes, but most of time it's just work stuff with her, and you probably don't work directly with me do you?"

The woman shook her head, which caused her hair to look even wild and unkempt. "No."

**"**And you don't have any friends here do you?" Mari asked.

**"**No, but I don't you think I'm bit too old and boring to be hanging out with you?"

**"**Ma'am, I'm far more used to hanging out with adults then people my own age. I'm not even sure how normal teenagers really act," Mari explained.

**"**Sheltered life, huh?" the lady asked.

Mari nodded slightly. "Pretty much."

**"**Alright," the lady said hesitantly, "I suppose one lunch wouldn't hurt."

Mari smiled wide. "Awesome! Would, um, Tuesday, next week work for you?"

**"**How about Wednesday?"

**"**That's fine too, Miss…"

"Aoi, Aoi Vincennes," she said as she extended her hand.

_Always with the hands! _Mari grabbed it and gave a somewhat awkward hand shake. "My name's Mari, Mari Illustrious Makinami."

"That's quite a name you got there," Aoi said with a smirk.

"Thanks. So, Wednesday around noon at the big cafeteria?"

"Sounds great," Aoi said warmly.

"So um, I'll see you then," Mari said as Aoi walked away

/

There were three distinct alarm sirens in Bethany Base, one for emergencies like a fire outbreak or the base was flooding, one for terrorist attacks, and one for the Angel in case it escaped. The last one was the siren that awoke Mana at just after midnight.

She threw together a few things and quickly rushed out of her room. There was a helicopter leaving in about a minute for the _Uriel II_, and she had to be on it. Mana rushed down the hallway, avoiding all the other people rushing to evacuate, do whatever they could to slow down the Angel, or prep Unit-05 for launch.

She ran into Jack trying to go down a flight of stairs that everyone else was trying to go up.

"Jack, what the hell are you doing?" Mana shouted.

"The…thing, I have to get it before the whole base is trashed!"

"It's lost! You know that as well as I do. It's freaking below the Angel normally, if the room hasn't been wrecked the Angel will EAT YOU if you try to get it!"

Jack hesitated for a second, which caused him to be pushed up the stairs by a mass of people.

The area was rocked violently, causing the lights to flicker and multiple people to cry out in terror.

A second later multiple explosions rumbled violently below them.

"There just isn't time," Mana declared and grabbed Jack by the arm, just about dragging him to the helicopter pad.

/

She'd gotten about two hours of sleep before this; that didn't matter.

The Eva was a scrapped together prototype that had been repeatedly been scheduled for the scrap yard; that didn't matter.

She could die; that didn't matter.

All that mattered to Mari was that she was mere moments away from piloting an Evangelion into combat with Angel. She'd been waiting for this for so long. Excited didn't even begin to describe how she felt, in fact she was actively having to suppress a squee. Every little doubt and nagging concern that had been plaguing her for months was shut up.

A number of different of voices came over the intercom, going on about how her synch ratio was at normal levels, that the plug was at the proper depth level, and how the Eva's arms weren't quite properly synching with the rest of it.

"Pilot, can you conform that communications systems are working?" a Nerv tech asked her.

"Testing one, two; testing one, two. Can you guys hear me all right?" Mari called out.

"Roger, comm link active."

Kaji came on the line, apologizing for the replacement not arriving on time.

Frankly, Mari was glad the thing hadn't arrived, it was far too…normal for her. Provisional Unit-05 was, special, maybe not special in a good way, but still Mari liked that she was piloting something that was different than the rest. It made her stand out.

Now the plugsuit on the other hand . . . Mari pulled at it trying to alleviate the annoying pressure it was putting on her chest. She been there for almost two years, and they still didn't have one that fit her. The new one was apparently properly measured this time – and pink, which was freaking awesome – but it's a bit too late to worry about that.

Mari began punching in the start-up sequence on the controls. She could hear it coming to life, its spirit awakening, the purring of its engine, its arms and legs kicking on, it was the most beautiful music she had ever heard.

_I can do this, Mom did this, and Dad did this. This is more than just my job, this is my freaking birthright. I've been in funk for a while now, but that's about to change. I'm finally getting what the boy promised me, and I'm not going to squander it. I'm going to kick that Angel's ass so hard that its nose will bleed._

"All right," Mari said, brimming with confidence. "Evangelion Provisional Unit-05, activate!"

/

The _Ural II_-class command ship was abuzz with activity. The Angel was plowing through the defensive barriers like they were nothing, and the commander, an old bearded fellow – who Mana could not for the life her remember his name, or the last time she even saw him – was enraged and dismayed at its rapid progress. The captain of the ship, apparently an old 'friend' of Jack's from the war, was beginning preparation to move the ship to a safe distance away from the main base in the now likely event the Angel escaped. Various other people were rattling off information about Unit-05 that basically amounted to, "it's going down a tunnel very fast," and somewhere in the background she could swear she heard the very excited voice of Mari shouting about something.

"So," Jack whispered to her. "The day after a new and better Evangelion is announced to be on its way here the Angel stages a prison break. Suspicious, very suspicious."

"For once Jack I think your paranoia is completely justified."

"And didn't you say that Seele controlled all the remaining Evangelions?"

"I wasn't even sure there were other Evangelions after Unit-05, but yeah, apparently Seele was going to turn over a until now top secret Evangelion to us, not their normal behavior."

The Angel burst through the last defenses of Limbo area like they were made of cardboard.

"How is this even possible?" the Commander exclaimed "Cocytus is the most advanced containment system and the world and the angel is just plowing through it."

Kaji spoke up. "It was always within the realm of possibly, perhaps even inevitable. That thing spent eons buried in layers of permafrost. We stripped it down to the bone, and all that seemed to do was piss it off. Well, with that said. . ." he put on an aviator helmet and gave a quick salute. "I'm off."

/

Mari began singing to herself as Unit-05 barreled down the corridors towards the third angel

"Happiness doesn't walk to me, because I'm walking to it  
>One day, one step. Three steps in three days<br>Three steps forward, two steps back  
>Life's a one-two punch!"<p>

Mari caught sight of the Angel. It looked a lot different than last time she saw it, its skeleton head somehow managing to glare at her with it's cold dead eye sockets. The rest of it was mostly just bone as well, with what looked like an entry plug attached to its neck. The only part that wasn't just bone was the middle, which was binded together with thick metal wiring, forcing to walk on only 4 of its remaining legs.

"Well, so much for the nose bleeding part. Oh well, deploying field!"

Mari thrust her lance at it as hard as she could, breaking its AT-Field with ease. The Angel dodged the spear and jumped up over the Eva's shoulder.

"What?" Mari quickly turned Unit-05 around, the controls were so stiff in her hands and more importantly it was still going in the wrong direction!

Metal rotors on the bottom Unit-05 activated, tearing apart the metal floors in attempt to slow it down, sending sparks everywhere.

"Too much dead weight still," Mari grunted in annoyance as Unit-05 crashed against a wall.

She looked at the Angel as it blasted its way through a bulkhead.

_It's ignoring me. The Angel is freaking ignoring me! That-that is BULLSHIT!_

Mari slammed the controls forward. Unit-05 rocket forward as fast as it could towards the Angel, which was now slicing a chunk out of the base above it with a golden halo. It began to rise, it was trying to escape.

That wasn't how it was suppose to go, this was supposed to be her big fight, her debut, and it was RUNNING AWAY!

"GET BACK HERE!" Mari bellowed.

She grabbed the Angel by one of its tiny legs just as it was about to burst through into the final layer and slammed it as hard she could into the tunnel.

The Angel let out an unearthly scream of rage as its dead eyes became a bright red, and burning hot energy beams erupted out of its' eyes. The beams raked Unit-05's left arm, quickly burning off the protective pale green paint job and turning the metal underneath molten

.

The LCL was boiling on her left side; the suit itself was peeling and burning away around the arm. The pain was beyond anything she'd ever felt before. In a normal situation she would be doubled over on the ground screaming in agony, but this wasn't a normal situation, this was _fun. _

Mari knew it would be fun, but she had no idea just how much fun it would be though. The fight was taking fun to levels she didn't even know where possible.

She pinned the angel to the side of the tunnel by its neck with the lance.

Mari had never experienced anything remotely like this before. The thrill, the rush she got as she tried to grabbed the Angel's core in its mouth, beak…thing.

The Angel screamed again. Even through the various filters in the helmet and Eva itself she could still hear it and feel blood flowing out of her ears. She could feel her grip on the core weakening. Her left gauntlet had been damaged, she was having difficulty maintaining synchronization with the arm, and worse yet her Eva was fighting for control of the arm.

She liked Unit-05, but her limited time with it had taught Mari that it was a temperamental beast at the best of times, and outright rebellious at the worst, like right now.

The core slipped from her grasp, the arm falling back as Mari struggled to reassert her control of it

The Angel lashed out and its energy beams cut her lance in half effortlessly.

"Crap!" Mari exclaimed.

The shattered remains of the lance dropped to the ground. Mari used the now free claw to grab the core, trying to crush the blood red orb with all her might. She began to hear the Eva, wordlessly pleading for her to give up control of the damaged arm

_No, I still have power, I got this, I GOT THIS!_

The Eva relented and Mari grabbed the core with both claws.

Cracks and fissures appeared on the core.

"Just die!"

The metal rotors kicked in again, desperately trying to hold the Angel in place as trashed about manically.

"JUST. FREAKING. DIIEEEEE!"

The core shattered in her grasp. For a brief second Mari sat there staring at the dead angel and her victory, a small error message in the corner of her screen going unnoticed.

Then the angel exploded, violently.

/

Mana watched her screen as the top of Bethany buckled and then erupted in a massive fireball, the sealing pillars that ringed the top collapsing into the sea as a single, massive, terribly brilliant cross of light appeared out of the fireball.

"Why does that happen?" Jack said, his eyes transfixed on the screen.

"I don't know, I never understood it myself," she replied.

"My god," Mana said in dawning horror. "The Acheron area is gone, probably most of the top layer of Limbo as well! What the hell? It was designed to withstand that…that shouldn't have happened! There were still people in there. Oh hell!"

_That wasn't supposed to happen_, she thought bitterly to herself.

/

One cross, not two, just one.

"Huh." Kaji said as he watched the explosion from his plane. "Unit-05's self destruct must have misfired, or maybe . . ." Kaji thought back to his last conversation with Mana. "Well now, that's an interesting little complication."

/

Her glasses were cracked and broken, blood was running from her the top of her head and her ears, the LCL had taken on a decidingly brunt smell for some reason, Unit-05 was nearly a wreck, but Mari had just killed an honest to God Angel, and that was all that mattered to her right now. Mari winced as she felt searing white hot pain shoot through her right arm.

Well, the victory was almost all that mattered.

"That really hurt. Synching with the Eva was even worse than the rig. Well, at least we're alive, and I'm finally gonna go home. I just hope the adults can do their part."

Mari pulled off her helmet.

"You did great Unit-05, but hopefully next time we can end the fight with a few more body parts intact."

/

The elevator stopped about three feet too soon, forcing Mana to pry open the doors and climb out of it.

Mana looked around. The room was a mess, with the black tile that covered the room was smashed in many places. Previously hidden alarm systems, laser tripwires, machine guns, gas dispensers, and even the pulsed energy projection system had been torn out of the walls violently. Most noticeable was the fact that the cross had been shattered, and the once painfully bright lights behind it now barely gave out enough light for her to see.

Mana pulled out her cell phone.

"It's Mana. The Key is gone, just like you said. So I suppose were off to Tokyo-3 now? Well I hope you have a plan to get Mari there, because you and I both know Unit-05 was never supposed to leave Bethany, and you keep on insisting that she's absolutely vital for what's to come. Okay, okay if you insist it's that easy I'll tell Jack to try it, but if it doesn't work you better have a good freaking backup plan… Mana out."

/

"The treaty was put in place for a reason."

"I know."

"In fact, you were one of the first advocates for it, Jack."

"I know, but the situation has changed."

The shadowy woman on the screen leaned in closer, exposing the bottom of her aged and worn face and solemn frown.

"Yes, Unit-05's survival is rather unexpected, but still, it was intended for one purpose and one purpose only, and that purpose has been fulfilled. With Bethany out of commission, doing anything other than proper disposal of it would draw… unwanted attention to our organization."

"I know, I know!" Jack just about shouted. "But Unit-05 would make our plans so much easier. It would mean we didn't have to covertly drop Mari into the country, we could have our pilot right there next to everything. Hell, maybe she would be able to take the Key back for us."

"That's a big 'if,' Ryan. The Second Child is already scheduled to be transferred to NERV-00, they won't reject her for Mari."

"We don't need them too, Unit-05's provisional status and highly experimental nature means we could very easily argue that it's the exception to the Vatican Treaty."

"You do realize that having four working Evangelions at the same place will make it that much easier for…"

"Again, _I know,_" Jack exclaimed, "but it's a risk I think is worth taking. If we get Mari in with the other pilots, she might be able to covertly turn some of them to our cause, or at the very least they might follow her lead when the end comes."

"You place an awful lot of faith in this girl," The women observed.

"Not faith, not exactly. Let's just say I believe her training and conditioning is more than sufficient for this."

"…Very well, I'll make the calls. You do realize that Nerv's going to have its eyes on her from the moment she sets foot on Japanese soil? They're going to think she's a spy and treat her accordingly."

"Of course, otherwise this would be too easy."

Jack frowned for a second.

"Now if you'll excuse me I have a boat to catch."


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Notes: Thank you everyone for the reviews. Sorry this chapter took so long

Chapter 6: The Shikinami Situation.

Strangely, Mari hadn't felt this at home in a long time. The buckled and broken walls of the hallway she now walked in, the lights that seemed to now constantly flicker on and off, the occasional stray wire that sparked menacingly, the unshakable feeling that at any point something could go wrong and the roof might fall on her, or that the whole thing might break and crash into whatever remained of the floor below. All it needed was her mom scrounging for medical supplies in a desk that was mostly buried underneath a ton of concrete and rusty metal and it would be about as homely as the sight of her dad cooking.

She technically wasn't supposed to be here, 67 percent of Bethany had been declared unsafe for anyone not involved in repairing the base to travel to until further notice. Unfortunately for her, her room was in that percentage, and it would be weeks if not months before this section was repaired, and she was leaving for Tokyo-3 tonight. She had to at least try and recover her things; even if nothing was intact she had to at least find out for herself.

To her left the ceiling partially gave way, spilling out a large amount of filthily debris on to the floor. Things like that would normally be cue for her to start high tailing it out of the place before it collapsed but she pressed on, she was almost there.

After a minute Mari stopped, an unpleasant smell was wafting through the air.

She looked around for a while trying to find the source of it. It was nasty, but strangely familiar as well.

She finally caught sight of an arm poking out of a pile of twisted and brunt metal shards and bits of glass.

Mari called out, trying to get the person's attention. No response was forthcoming.

She grabbed the slender arm; it felt freakishly cold and stiff. Ignoring that Mari tried to pull it out of the pile, she wasn't even able to make the appendage budge under all that debris, no matter how much she pulled.

Mari let go, the arm falling to the floor limply.

"Okay, what can I do?" Mari said to herself. "Metal, probably rusty, and glass, not exactly a fun combination. I can't just pull them out like I would with something back home, the pile's too heavy. Can't exactly pull the stuff off her without cutting up my hands either. Man, what I wouldn't give for a good pair of gloves right now… wait," Mari's face broke in a smile.

"Okay, just hold on for a moment lady - sorry, sir, if you're not a lady - I got an idea to get you out of there I just need to grab something out of my room, just hold on."

Mari returned a few minutes later with some crude strips of former jeans and shirts wrapped tightly around her hands and arms.

"Um, hello?" Mari called out. "Can you hear me?"

No response, yet again.

"Well if you can, I'm about to get you out so don't start struggling on anything to get out, that will probably make things worse. Just keep calm and you're be out of there and no time."

An hour later, and Mari was covered in sweat and grime. The denim and cloth covering her arms was ripped apart and in a few places was wet with blood.

Mari struggled with a particular large piece of what was once a steel girder. The thing was ridiculously heavy, but, near as she could tell, it was directly on above the person's head so she had to get it off.

She pulled as hard as she could. Her arms felt they were about to be ripped from their sockets when it finally budged. First a little bit, then all at once she was finally able to pull the whole thing off, wincing as it loudly crashed to the floor.

It was Aoi, her face was covered in dirt and debris, her dark brown eyes stared blankly at the ceiling above.

"Aoi?" Mari said. "Are you alright."

She stared at Aoi, rather confused as to why she wasn't responding when she was clearly awake.

"Aoi?" she repeated

Still no response.

Mari paced for a second, trying to make sense of the situation.

"Maybe she's just unconscious. Yeah, unconscious, that's it. Should probably pull her out of there."

She griped Aoi by her shoulders, but let go in a yelp.

She looked at her hands, they were coated in blood.

"That's a hell of a lot of… blood."

Mari slumped to the ground as the truth finally dawned on her.

"Oh," she said in quiet shock.

Mari stared at her hands, then back at Aoi's corpse, unsure of what to do or even what to feel.

She'd thought she understood death before, she'd known for a long time that almost everyone back home was dead and what that meant, but seeing the actual corpse of someone, someone she knew, if only briefly, that was something she'd never dealt with before. Sure, maybe her parents were going to die eventually, but that would be decades from now, then, whatever. Yeah, there was always all those dangers they warned Mari about, but they never actually killed anyone. They came close sometimes, maybe injured someone, but no one actually died from them. That wasn't how it worked, right?

/

"Let's see; _House __Of Leaves_, keep. Tablet PC, definitely keep. C0RE."

Mana flicked on a blue robot. Its body was basically just a large metal sphere with a violet eye attached to four arching legs that ended in simple points.

"In 1893 the US Supreme Court ruled that the tomato was a vegetable in the landmark case, Nix v. Hedden. Technically though the Tomato is a legume," it rattled off.

"…Keep," Mana said with a sigh. "My CD collection, I think I transferred everything to my MP3 player last year, so throw away. _Doctor Who_ DVDs… Ehh, keep."

"Whatca doing?"

Mana turned to see Mari standing in the door way, holding her backpack in one gloved hand.

"She will most likely kill you. Violently."

"Shut up, C0RE," Mana snapped.

Mari raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, just ignore him, he says that to everyone."

"What is that?" Mari said cautiously.

"Oh, he's just a little hobby of mine. Well, more like a failed college project I tinker with every so often, long story."

"C0RE is a good person, whose insights are relevant," the robot insisted.

"Uh huh," Mana muttered as she stuffed a pile of clothes into a large suitcase. "So you got everything packed up?"

"Yeah, well, mostly everything. The clothes were pretty much a loss," Mari replied.

"That's a shame. Well, we can always get new clothes at… the hell are you wearing?" Mana asked, just noticing that Mari was wearing a red puffy jacket that looked about three sizes too big for her, along with what seemed to be work gloves.

"Where did you even get that jacket?" Mana asked.

"…Found it," Mari said nervously.

Mana was skeptical. "Uh huh."

"It was chilly," she said defensively.

"Seriously?" Mana replied, her disbelief obvious.

"Yeah." Mari said.

"The hallway to my room is almost 30 degrees Celsius due to the cooling system being broken, the only reason I'm not boiling right now is because the AC for my room is piped in from a different source, and even then I had to turn on some fans," Mana pointed to a row of about 10 fans rotating in place on a shelf behind her."

Mari shrugged. "Felt chilly to me."

Mana raised an eyebrow "You know we do regular drug tests here?"

"Ookay… I'll keep that mind."

"You have no idea what I mean by that do you?" Mana asked.

"Besides the fact that it involves peeing in a cup, not a damn clue."

"Anyways," Mana shifted the topic. "Jack isn't going to be on the flight with us."

"Why?"

"He really doesn't like flying," she explained.

Mari looked at her, confused. "Why?"

"He never really said, he just really doesn't. I wouldn't worry about it though. Jack said he called in a few favors to get better ride there, so he should be there pretty soon after us."

"What kind of favors?" Mari asked.

/

"You Jack?" a man said in heavily accented English.

Jack turned around to see a tall slender man with a thick black beard dressed in an old officer's uniform.

"Ah, you must Feodor." Jack said as he shook his hand. "Osip's told me so much about you." "Likewise,"

Feodor said with a nod. "My brother has spoken quite highly of you and your actions during the war, which is odd considering…"

Jack waved his hands in front of Feodor. "It's a long story."

"Of course it is. I imagine how you managed to get him to requisition the _Severomorsk _for your own personal taxi service is probably as long a tale as well, no?"

"Oh, that was nothing," Jack said dismissively. "The real story is why the Admiral of the Northern Fleet approved the requisition so easily."

"You will have to tell me this story sometime, Jack," he said with just a hint of childlike curiosity in his voice.

"I would, but doing so probably divulge American, Russian, and Chinese state secrets. No offense, but I think they would frown on me telling you them," Jack explained.

"Chinese?"

"Long story."

/

"That is a big ass plane," Mari said in awe.

"Yes it is," Mana said in bored agreement.

They stood on the edge of long airstrip shortly outside of town. The airstrip had been specifically made for Bethany, and was now home to one giant plane, and a number of smaller but still abnormally large planes, along with a few escort fighters.

Mari normally didn't care much for planes, she wasn't afraid of flying, there was just something unnervingly weird about them. Plus, the planes they preformed various sorts of tests and training on looked like they'd been left in a shed to rust for over a decade. This plane however was something else entirely. It was basically a gigantic set of wings raised high above the ground by two massive sets of landing gear.

Between the landing gear of the plane was Provisional Unit-05. Its remaining limbs had been removed so it could be inserted to a metal shell that completely covered it up to its head.

"They aren't expecting me to actually fight with it like this are they?" she asked, remembering the various air-drop training simulations they ran her through over the years.

"No, it was either this or transport Unit-05 by boat, be thankful we picked this one," Mana explained.

"So," she went on. "The flight takes about twenty hours to reach the airport in Japan, not counting a number of refueling stops on the way there. Your cabin should have everything you need, fridge full of a food, bathroom, even a TV. I'm on one of the smaller planes, so I won't see you again until we refuel, but if you need to talk to me you can call me on my cell, okay?"

"Okay." Mari replied as she began walking towards her plane.

"You sure you're okay? I mean the jacket makes sense now…" Mana pressed.

"I'm fine. Okay?" she said with a sigh.

"If you say so. Oh, and there's a parachute in your cabin, be sure to inspect it."

"Thanks _mom_," Mari snarked as she walked away.

/

Mari looked around her cabin, it was small, very small. There was barely enough room to walk around, especially after she put her stuff down, and the bed was probably smaller than her. The fridge and TV were both built into the wall, and like the rest of the room were definitely on the small side.

Mari sat down as she peeled off her sweat soaked jacket and gloves, revealing her heavily bandaged arms and hands. She didn't think the cuts were bad enough to justify such extensive bandaging, but the group that collected Aoi's body had insisted on sending her to the infirmary. They in turn seemed to be under the impression that each cut needed to be cleaned out a hundred times and covered with roughly two miles of bandages.

As she looked at her hands she tried to figure out how to feel. The shock of seeing a dead person had worn off, and now she was more confused than anything. She should feel something about this, shouldn't she?

_I'd met her once for maybe a couple of minutes. It's not like I hung out with her or even really knew her beyond her name and odor. It's not like Mana or Jack died. _

Mari paused; those were the only two people she knew at Bethany. Her teachers tended to rotate frequently, all the other people she worked with tended to be no more than voices on an intercom, or treated her like she was just another part of the Eva. Billions of people in the world and she barely knew anymore people then she did at home. And now one of them was dead.

It wasn't her fault; the Angel probably caused the collapse before she even got in the pilot's seat. Besides, it not like she had any choice, she had to pilot the Eva to save the world. She couldn't have saved her, or anyone else who died. She stopped the angel as quickly as possible.

A small smile appeared on her face as she thought about the battle.

_Besides_, she thought to herself, _it's not like I would have been able to hang out with Aoi anyways after the Angel attack_. She would have stayed at Bethany while Mari went to Tokyo-3. So what was the point in getting so upset? She didn't save someone she barely knew and would likely have never known, her parents probably went through lots of times and it didn't affect them - well, okay, a lot of things seemed to have affected her dad, but she couldn't recall him bringing something like this up.

If she let herself get bugged by situations like this it would drive her insane and distract from her job.

Something about that felt very hollow to her.

/

Mana was looking through a large stack of what had to be the most boring paperwork in the world when her phone rang.

She grumbled to herself as she answered it.

"_Mana, hi, is it okay if I ask you a quick question?"_ Mari asked.

"Mari?" Mana asked, clearly not expecting her to be the one calling her.

"Yeah, wait, is this a bad time or something?"

"No, no, go ahead," Mana said as she mentally prayed it wasn't like a lot of rather odd questions Mari had asked over the past two years.

"So, hypothetically speaking," Mari began, tripping over the word hypothetically. "Suppose someone dies, someone you know, except you barely know them, like you met them once. What do you do?"

"Umm, personally with that I would probably just feel bad for like a few seconds, then move on," Mana answered, rather confused by the question.

"But what if," Mari went on, not happy with the answer she got. "You, say, found…err, never mind."

"Found what?" she asked.

"Nothing," Mari replied lamely.

"Mari, what did you find?" she pressed.

"Nothing, nothing. I'm just going to go with your advice. Kay, thanks, bye," Mari said quickly as she hung up.

Mana stared at the phone for a second before she sighed and went back to her paperwork.

/

A few hours later they were both standing on an impromptu airstrip somewhere in China.

"So, why are we stopping here anyways?" Mari asked Mana they walked underneath one of the wings of the massive plane.

"Refueling and regrouping. We're meeting up with another flight bound for Tokyo-3, your transfer just so happened to match with the transfer of the Second Child. Nerv may be uncertain about having you, but merging the two flights together saves them a massive amount of money. It's a good thing too, because if it didn't save us that money we'd probably would have been waiting around Bethany from here to Third Impact.

_Second Child? Wait that's…That means she's. . . !_

Mari let out a loud squeal of delight and began jumping up and down rather excitedly.

"What… what the heck are you doing?" Mana asked, rather taken off guard.

Mari stopped. "Sorry, it's just I'm very excited to finally see her… I mean meet another pilot," Mari put on her best serious face. "Because it's very thrilling to finally meet a fellow comrade in arms, yes."

"No offense kid, but considering what I've heard, you are way way too excited to meet her."

Mari frowned "Well sure, I've heard she can be… abrasive, but I'm sure underneath it all Asuka Langley Soryu is a…"

"Shikinami," Mana corrected

Mari blinked in confusion. "Huh?"

"Her name is Asuka Langley _Shikinami_."

"You sure about that?" Mari asked rather insistently.

"Positive."

"How positive?"

"Very Positive."

"I don't believe you."

"Why?"

Mari paused for a second. "Well… Let's just say I have very good sources that have told me her last name was Soryu."

Mana cocked her head to one side and looked at Mari as if she had dark purple skin. "Look, do you want me to take you to her so we can settle this once and for all?"

Mari nodded eagerly. "Yes, very much so."

"Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you kid."

/

"HiIt'sonhonortomeetyoumyname'sMari."

Asuka stared with wide eyes at the brown haired girl who had excitedly run up to her and let out a rapid fire assault on the English language.

"Uh, hi," Asuka replied, her voiced filled with annoyance and confusion.

"Oh, sorry, I just got overwhelmed for second; it's very exciting meeting a fellow pilot for the first time," the girl said in a slower calmer voice, but it was obvious that girl was still overexcited, and worse, looked like she was on the verge of hugging her.

Asuka moved her foot just slightly, putting it in an ideal position for a leg sweep if Mari so much as moved one step closer.

"So, you're the pilot they broke the treaty for, didn't realize that hyperactive squirrels were so important to the Vatican."

Mari made a small frown but was otherwise unfazed by her insult.

"Well, it's Unit-05 that's special; technically it doesn't break the treaty due to its status."

"Oh, so the Vatican only makes an exception for the aborted piece of crap you call an Evangelion and not its stupid half trained pilot, my mistake."

"It's not a piece of crap," Mari said defensively. "I mean it's not perfect, but . . ."

Asuka snorted. "That's an understatement."

Mari folded her arms. "Well, it was good enough to take down the Angel. Anyways, I came here to ask you a question. What's your last name?"

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"It's… it's a source of debate between me and my friend Mana," Mari said sheepishly.

"Not that it's really any of your business, but it's Shikinami."

Mari's eyes widened.

"I don't even want to know what the hell sort of weird ass debate you were having with girlfriend," Asuka continued. "Anyways, just because you got lucky and managed to kill an Angel doesn't mean you're special. Once I make my big Japanese debut I'll show you how a real pilot kills an Angel."

Mari wasn't listening to her anymore; her eyes were transfixed on Asuka's brown hair.

"Is that your natural hair color?" Mari asked nervously.

Asuka frowned deeper, wondering what was with this girl and her odd questions. "Yeah, what of it?"

/

_Her hair is brown, not red. Close to red, but not quite. Mom's was red, not close to red, not dyed red, natural red hair. Her last name Soryu, it was always Soryu. I've never even heard the name Shikinami before now._

_So why the hell am I currently staring at Asuka Langley Shikinami, a girl with brown hair and pilot of Unit-02, when that position should be held by Asuka Langley Soryu, a girl with red hair and my future mother?_

_This girl isn't my mother, she's close… very close, too close. She's like a slightly off brand version of her. She's even giving me the same sort of glare mom would give me._

_What the hell is going on? I thought the moon and the ocean were just simple mistakes on my parent's part, but this… this is too different. _

_Calm down Mari, there has to be an explanation for this. Something mom and dad never told you, maybe something they might have forgotten._

_WHAT? What could explain this? Was mom actually a freaking clone of the original, only they got the hair color wrong? What could possibly explain this?_

Mari shut down, her eyes vacantly staring in Asuka's direction, but not exactly looking at her.

Asuka Shikinami tilted her head in confusion, and then proceeded to flick Mari on the nose.

This caused Mari to flinch violently and retreat away from Shikinami while muttering about things being wrong.

"Weirdo," Asuka said dismissively and walked back to her awaiting plane.

Mana walked up to Mari, who was staring at the departing Asuka with a mix of confusion and terror.

"Mari," Mana placed an arm on her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

Mari looked at her, her eyes filled with tears.

"N..Nothing, just not what I-I expected," she lied

/

Mari paced up and down the length of her room on the plane, which admittedly wasn't very big, trying to make sense of what she knew.

It was simply impossible, like an ocean made of tree bark or air suddenly turning into gold, and yet it existed.

_Dad always said the ocean was blue before Third Impact, yet it's red. Mom always said the moon didn't have that stain on it when she was a kid, yet it has the stain and she's a kid. Except it's not exactly her, it's her with different hair and the wrong last name. _

Mari kicked her backpack across the room in frustration.

_Maybe, maybe I could have misheard my parents when it came to the first two, or maybe I'm just remembering wrong after all these years, but the last one…_

Mari grabbed the backpack and ripped through it, grabbing her locket out it.

She opened and looked at both pictures intently, in the younger picture her mom looked exactly like Shikinami… except the hair color; it was close, but undeniably different.

_No mistake, something's different, something's wrong._

She glanced at her dad in the pictures. No one had corrected her when she called him Shinji Ikari, so that at least was the same.

_So why is she different? Did I do something wrong to cause this? No, that's absurd; I've been here only a few years, how could I have caused this? Okay, so how to fix this?_

Mari pondered for a second before letting out a string of German and Russian curses before she collapsed onto the bed.

"You know, an explanation would really be helpful right now!" Mari declared to the ceiling.

The faint sound of the giant plane's engines was the only response.

Two years and she hadn't heard a peep out of the boy, not even so much as a brief glimpse of him.

He probably knew what was going on, he had to know what was going on, but he wasn't here.

Why the hell did he stick her in this _place_ anyways?

So what was she suppose to do? Just accept that her mother had been replaced by this Shikinami person?

Mari sighed, in her mind that was pretty much the only thing she could do.

_It's wrong, it's so very wrong, but I've come too far to let this stop me. So I have to work with this Shikinami person. I can deal with it. I don't like it, I don't like her, but I have a job to do and I can't back out, I won't back out. Whatever happens, whatever new wrongness I encounter, I know I'll find my parents again, and I'll give them a world to call home…_

Even as she tried to reassure herself, doubt crept into the back of her mind.

W_hat if I can't find them? What if Shikinami's punishment for abandoning them?_

She punched her head, trying to force the thought out.

_Don't think that, don't you dare think that! We're going to find them again, even if we have to track the boy down to the ends of the earth, even if it takes us tell we are 50 years old we will find a way to get them back here. I can't just leave them like that forever. Two years is bad enough as it is._

"Damnit," she muttered as she stared at the ceiling, fearing what the past two years had been like for her mother and father. A thousand horrible arguments and fights played out in her mind. Dad would likely blame mom, mom might blame herself and spiral into a horrible depression like dad, or she'll blame her. Mom had long grown sick of her running away; Dad seemed to be rather sympathetic still, but the last few times she ran away seemed to downright enrage her mom. Maybe after the last time she just decided to wash her hands of Mari and start over, maybe have a new kid.

_Wait, no, Mom wouldn't do that. She didn't even really want me to begin with…_

Mari stopped that line of thinking immediately; some things needed to stay buried.

So what was she supposed do?

"How do you ignore crap like this?" Mari asked herself, thinking back to what Mana told her shortly after coming to Bethany.

Everything was beyond her control, but they were far too big to just ignore. Of course, if she didn't ignore them she was going to go completely insane sooner or later.

She just needed to find something she could control, and focus on that. So what did she control?

… Nope, nothing.

Sure, in theory she controlled whether or not she piloted once she got to Japan. Run away the moment the plane hit the ground and they'd probably never find her, but to actually run? That would be a horrible betrayal of her duty to the entire world. More importantly, why would she abandon something so freaking awesome?

Years of waiting, training - really damn insane training - having to deal with incomprehensibly cold and distant people, and it was so very worth it.

Piloting was everything she dreamed about and more. It was fun, very fun, but beyond that it seemed to appease something very… base in her. Like some very fundamental part of her had been yearning to pilot all her life and now that she had she felt… whole, almost. Even with the horrible controls she never felt more comfortable then she did those few minutes she was in the pilot's seat.

She had piloting; it was pretty much all she had at this point, but it was enough.

_/_

"You're pretty damn stupid."

"Huh?" Mari sat up to see Shikinami standing at the foot of her bed, glaring at her.

"You are an idiot, a moron, your IQ is equal to room temperature, you get lost…"

"I got it, I got it," Mari interrupted. "I was dropped on the head as a child. Did you come in here just to tell me that?"

Shikinami's face turned into a sneer. "You really don't get what's going on do you?"

"Clearly I don't so would you… Wait. How the hell did you get here?"

She laughed in an uncomfortably familiar way… "I'm not here."

"Is that supposed to be deep or something?" suddenly things clicked in Mari's mind. "Oh I'm dreaming. Great, it's one of _those_ dreams again."

Shikinami was now standing on the bed next to where Mari was sitting; glaring down at her with eyes filled with… smoke?

"Amazing," she said with fake shock as the wall behind her shifted to a rather unnatural shade of orange.

"So, you going to explain what I'm not getting or what?" Mari asked.

Mari coughed loudly, her chest suddenly felt like it was on fire, and the simple act of breathing was becoming increasing painful with each passing second.

_What the hell is going on?_

Shikinami just stared at her uncertainly, as if she wasn't sure what she wanted to say.

"I would," Shikinami said after a while, oblivious to Mari's distress, "but the plane's on fire."

/

Fire, the tiny bathroom was on fire. Mari had absolutely no idea why or how it was on fire, but that was quickly becoming the least of her worries. The plane shook intensely around her and she could feel it starting to lean to the right. To top it off, screaming alarms filled the room.

Bad things, very bad things were happening. She quickly grabbed the parachute, put it on and made her way towards the door out, nearly tripping over her backpack in the process. She stared at it for a second before quickly dumping out its contents on the floor and grabbed her cross, the locket and her old SDAT Player and stuffed them into her skirt pockets.

She exited her room into a dark, smoke filled hallway, tiny flickering red lights on the floor being the only thing to guide her forward besides the occasional spark from something on the walls. Mari wheezed as she walked down the hallway, trying to call out for someone in between coughs. A plane this massive should have had a lot of people, and she was an Eva pilot. So why was no one trying to rescue or at least help her?

The plane started leaning even more to the right, catching Mari off guard and throwing her against the wall. As she pulled herself up she felt a handle. Feeling around some more she discovered a grip at head height, pulling it open to reveal a small circle window. The window revealed a blood red ocean broken up with clouds of black smoke and the sinking ruins of a warship.

"Well, better safe than sorry," she said as she struggled to get the door open. With the plane's increasing lean she was practically standing above it when she jumped out, the wind pulling her backwards and out from underneath the plane.

For a second Mari just stared at the plane, and number of unnaturally smooth and gaping holes had been punched into it. She pulled her parachute as it started to make a nose dive, deploying with a lurch that felt like it would wrench out her shoulders. She could see Unit-05 being launched, its own giant parachutes deploying moments after.

Mari scanned around, gasping when she saw it. A giant yet lanky Angel, walking on stick-like legs that froze the ocean beneath them with each step, its face like a rotating bird's skull, its main body seemed to be made of this hollow crystal black stuff, save for the large red orb that was at the end of the thing's tail.

It paid her no attention, her Eva was currently splashing into the ocean along with the wreckage of her plane, but still she took the Angel's lack of interest as an insult. She was a pilot; she laid waste to beings once considered divinity! And once again one wanted nothing to do with her; instead it launched multiple giant solid black darts at something above her. Mari craned her head upwards, catching sight of a red bipedal Eva being launched out of a plane identical to her's.

It was about to grab a giant gun of some sorts before the darts knocked it away. The Eva effortlessly dodged the rest of them even as they turned and twisted in an attempt to hit it. The Eva didn't touch their inky trails as it grabbed its gun, which showed itself to be a crossbow of some sorts and launched a single bolt at diamond shape in its 'neck'. The diamond exploded, taking the thing's head with it.

The individual bits and pieces started slowly drifting to the ground.

_Well of course Shikinami was able to defeat it. Any idiot could beat an Angel weak enough to die from one shot. What kind of lame ass Angel dies to gunfire anyway? _

The Angel then rapidly assembled itself back together, its tail rising into the air to replace its head. Shikinami's Eva launched multiple bolts as it fell towards the Angel, all of them blocked by multi-hued hexagonal AT-fields. It then quickly let go of the techno-crossbow and flipped itself around into a diving kick as it smashed into the Angel's field. The field flared to giant proportions as Unit-02 pressed a bolt into it.

Mari watched as it plunged through the AT-Field into the Angel itself, exploding out the other side in a shower of gore as the Angel went up in a spectacular cross of light that extended from the ground to the air above. Unit-02 then pulled off a couple of rolls before using its attached jetpack to pull off a perfect landing.

"Okay… that was the fucking awesome," Mari said reluctantly as she drifted slowly towards the beach.


	7. Chapter 7

.

Chapter 7: This is (Not) a Beautiful World

Mari had a lot of problems with introductions. The social conventions involved in them often confused her, and more often than not she found herself meeting people in the strangest situations: early in the morning after they nearly deafened you with an air horn, in the middle of the night on a helicopter she just woke up on, and most recently, accidentally parachuting into the person after narrowing escaping an Angel.

In her defense, she tried to warn the guy. Mari spotted him a little after the battle was over; he was on a pier staring out into the sea, probably looking at destruction the Angel's death had caused or something. At first she paid no attention to him, her mind still dealing with Shikinami's recent easy win. Then she noticed that where he was standing.

At Bethany she had weeks of on and off training on how to bail out of plane and how to control a parachute. Not enough to perform any sort of stunts, unfortunately, but enough that she could figure out where she was going to land at a glance. She was going to land on him and she didn't have enough time to turn away without crashing into a nearby wall or the ocean.

She screamed at him to get out of the way to no avail. By the time he noticed her rapidly descending on him it was too late. The resulting collusion was painful and embarrassing, mostly painful.

/

Mari was now almost blind, her chest felt like it had been crushed by a car, her parachute was probably in the ocean, and she was sitting on top of a possibly unconscious teenage boy. It, in short, could have gone better.

Mari stared at the boy under her. Even without her glasses something about him looked familiar, like she'd seen a picture of him before. If she had her glasses on she could tell.

_Crap!_ Mari thought to herself as she realized her glasses could have easily fallen off the pier and into the ocean.

She frantically searched around the pier on her hands and knees, finally finding them right on the very edge of the pier.

As she put them on she heard groaning behind her. She looked back to the boy trying to sit up and looking very dazed and confused.

"Sorry about that," she apologized.

_Where have I seen this boy before?_

He looked to be about her age, more or less, had short brown, and was wearing glasses - big circle glasses with tiny metal rings. Not her style, but they looked okay. Something about all that seemed so familiar. She'd seen his picture before but where? Bethany? Was this boy someone Jack had told to watch out for?

Mari walked, well crawled towards the boy. She got up as close as she could to him, causing him to turn a bright red in confusion and embarrassment. Then she sniffed him, he smelt like grass, chalk dust, and… gun oil? Strange, but he didn't smell like LCL so he wasn't a Nerv boy.

"What-what are you doing?" the boy asked nervously.

"Who are you?" Mari replied, ignoring the question.

"I'm Kensuke Aida," he said as his face turned even redder and his gaze drifted down for a moment.

_Kensuke… Kensuke. Kensuke. Kensuke and Touji… Oh, Kensuke! One of Dad's friends! Well, this is lucky._

"I'm Mari, pleasure to meet you," she said cheerily.

"Uh-huh. Could you, um, please move back a bit, please?" he asked nervously.

"Oh, um ,sure," Mari said as she stood up, puzzled by his reaction.

"It's just... well I . . . you, um, kinda were maybe getting a bit too in my personal space," he rambled as his face threatened to turn a solid red.

"Ah, sorry."

Mari's phone rang.

"Mari here," she answered in English as she went to try to collect her parachute.

"Hi, Mana. Of course I'm fine. I wouldn't be answering the phone if I wasn't."

Mari stared at the parachute. The thing had managed to detach itself when she landed and had wrapped partially around the railing, the rest trailing into the ocean below. With a sigh she went to work trying to untangle the expensive piece of equipment.

"No, no, we can talk," she briefly glanced back at Kensuke. "Just packing up my parachute after crashing into a boy… No, I literally crashed into him."

As she started to unwind the parachute the thing suddenly went tense. The lines snapped, and Mari could see the body of the parachute disappear into the murky depths of the red ocean.

"What the hell? No, not you, I think something just ate my parachute. So any word on my Eva?"

Kensuke seemed to perk up at that.

"So they can save it right? . . . Okay, good. . . . You want to meet where? What's a mall? . . . Okay, not sure how to get there though… it has a map? I think the phone's a bit small for… Oh, okay then. See you later, Mari out."

Mari looked over her phone with confusion.

"So you're a pilot?" Kensuke asked, his eyes lighting up in excitement.

"Huh?" Mari looked up. "Oh yeah, pilot of Unit-05 at your service."

"Cool! I, uh, I know two of the other pilots," he said nervously.

"Really?" Mari feigned surprise.

"Yeah, one of my best friends is one and both of them attend my school. Hey, I could…"

Kensuke's pocket let out a strange little tune.

He apologized before pulling out his phone, almost dropping it in his nervousness. He looked at for a second before turning back to Mari, his face about ready to burst from smiling.

"Say, have you met another pilot before?"

Mari sighed in irritation. "Yes, she was a phony bitch."

Kensuke's smile disappeared for the moment. "Oh… how would you like to meet a better one then?"

/

"What's it like being a pilot?" Kensuke asked eagerly as they walked along the beach.

"Huh?" Mari was looking intently at the nearby buildings of Tokyo-3. "Oh yeah, it's amazing! The most fun thing I've ever done. Training kinda sucks though."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, they often have me up at all hours. And most of what they have me doing is boring repetitive crap and they occasionally have me…" Mari stopped suddenly.

"Have you what?" Kensuke asked very eagerly.

Mari struggled for a second. She knew what she wanted to say, but for some reason she kept on stopping herself before you she could get two words out.

"Well . . ." Mari finally managed. "Let's just say that over the two years I've been doing this I've learned some… unpleasant… things."

"You okay?" he asked as Mari looked like she was about to explode.

"Fine, just… I'm fine. Anyways, training isn't important, the actual combat is, and it is freaking incredible! The smell of LCL rushing through your nose as you stab the Angel. The thrills of battle as you fight not just for your own survival but for all of humanity. The simple knowledge that for those few minutes you are one of the most powerful things on Earth and you could kill a god if you had to. It is the greatest thing I have ever experienced."

Kensuke looked at her with wonder. She could tell he clearly wanted desperately to be a pilot himself.

"That sounds awesome! Shinji always acts like doing it is the worst thing in the world."

_Yeah that sounds like him_,Mari thought.

"I don't know what to tell you, Kensuke. If I saved the world the world as many times as him I would be fucking ecstatic about it."

Things were quiet for a while after that, Kensuke was trying to think of something more to say while Mari turned her attention back to the giant buildings of Tokyo-3.

"Sooo, got any plans?" he asked suddenly.

"Well, following you right now."

"I mean after that. Besides piloting, what are your plans?"

Mari shrugged. "Well, got to find out where I'm going to live for starters. Pretty sure Mana's going to tell me that. After that… I dunno, school, Eva stuff, things like that."

"Well, I was just wondering, if you have the free time, would you like to um… hang out occasionally?"

She stared at him. A month ago she would have probably have grabbed him in a giant hug and spun him around in excitement.

Now… she was hesitant, he could die like Aoi. Of course, what else did she have? Asuka wasn't Asuka, and who knows what that said about Shinji, and he did ask, no one had ever asked her that.

"Sure, I mean, I don't know if I the time, but if do, definitely."

His face lit up. "Awesome! I'll have to introduce you to Touji. Wait…"

Kensuke looked off in the distance.

"I think I see him already, and he's with Shinji."

/

After Asu…Shikinami, Mari couldn't get nearly as excited at seeing Shinji. The image of him triggered this nagging voice in the back of her head that whispered "_It might not be him."_ Still, the sight of the shorter and scrawnier version of her dad brought a big smile to her face, even if he did have a depressingly familiar sad and vacant look in his eyes.

_Okay, what do we do? Handshake? No, no, those are weird and stupid. Probably wouldn't go for a hug. Could sniff him, probably smells of LCL. Wait, no, that weirded Kensuke out._

Mari stood there for a second, realizing that saying hello to someone was even harder when you put actual thought into it.

"Oh, what the hell?" she said finally as she walked towards Shinji, grabbing him in a big hug.

He was small, that much had been obvious since the moment she laid eyes on him, but now that she was up close it was even more apparent. For starters, she'd actually been able to lift him off the ground in her hug, something that would've been laughably impossible with her father even with her growing body. That was not to say her father was a big man by any means, but years of farm work had made him far bulkier then his counterpart.

Mari let him down gently. He backed off as he starred at her. Looking rather embarrassed and confused the whole time.

"I'm Mari by the way. Pilot of Provisional Unit-05," she said happily.

"S-shinji, why did you do that?" he asked.

"It's just so exciting to meet you," Mari said eagerly.

"M-me?" he clearly found that absurd.

"Well, yeah, I mean you killed more Angels than anyone else. You're a damn hero!"

He was backing up in even more, towards Misato. Slowly, as if any sudden movement might trigger Mari.

"Looks like you got a fan girl," Misato quipped as she nudged Shinji, who looked increasingly uncomfortable.

It was at that that Mari finally noticed Misato, really noticed her. She was pretty close to what her parent's always described, even had the same cross that was currently buried in Mari's left pocket. The same cross she gave her dad right before she died.

The thought unnerved her.

"So you're the 'extra' pilot everyone's talking about?" Misato asked.

"Um, yeah, I guess," Mari scratched the back of her neck. "Wait, what have people been saying?"

"Mostly about how unexpected your transfer was. Well, that and speculation about why they broke the treaty for you," Misato explained.

"Well they didn't technically break the treaty. Provisional status and all that."

"True, I don't think anyone thought a provisional status Eva would actually survive a battle," Misato replied.

"Well, I sure showed them-wait, what?" Mari asked suddenly, surprised at the implication.

"You mean they didn't explain this to you?"

"Unit-05 was experimental and rather scraped together. Is there something else I need to know?" Mari asked.

"Ehh… I should probably let someone else explain this to you, not really my area of expertise, and..." she trailed off. "Oh hi, Rei."

Mari turned around; a blue-haired red-eyed girl in a white plug suit was walking up.

Mari stared at her. Rei, Auntie Rei, "Wonder girl." She was the other pilot, the one that didn't survive Third Impact. She was also the giant head in that floated in the sea all her life. Different hair color, but it was her, she was sure of it. She looked a lot like that boy on the beach as well, same eyes, exact same blood red eyes.

What the hell happened? What the hell turned her into that giant head? She always knew Third Impact was a weird event, but this . . . she didn't know what the hell to make of this.

"H-hi," Mari said nervously.

"Hello," her voice was almost completely devoid of emotion, which only furthered Mari's unease.

"Nice to meet you… I'm gonna go over there," Mari quickly made her way over to Kensuke and Touji.

_Okay, got another to figure this out. Whatever happened to her is certainly key to Third Impact, save Rei from that fate, save the world. Now all I need to do is find out… why do I smell perfume?_

She turned to Touji, who suddenly turned his gaze away from her.

"Why do you smell like perfume?" Mari asked.

"What?! I don't smell like perfume!" Touji said defensively.

Mari sniffed him.

"Kinda do."

"No I don't!"

Mari put her hands up defensively.

"I didn't mean to offend, I was just…"

Kensuke interrupted. "Oh hey, look, the other Evangelion is pulling in."

_/_

"That's not the only thing's that's cool about it. Unit-01 and Unit-00 are basically beta testing prototypes, and don't even get me started on _Provisional _Unit-05, but Unit-02 is the real deal. The world's very first true Evangelion," Asuka loudly declared before skipping off her red Eva.

_Urge…to…kill…rising._

"Asuka Langley Shikinami, pride of the European Air Force," Misato introduced as Mari visibly flinched at her last name.

"It's been a while, Misat…what the hell are you doing here?!" the Second Girl said angrily as she noticed Mari standing next to Shinji and the others.

"Oh, you know, introducing myself to the other pilots without being a jackass," Mari said bitterly.

"Funny, I thought they would have sent you home after your weird little psychological meltdown."

Mari folded her arms. "I got over it."

"Oh, good because Nerv totally needs a pilot who freaks out over hair color. Hey, maybe you'll get luckily and they will actually be able fish your _provisional _Evangelion out of…"

"Verpiss dich!" Mari interrupted sharply.

The German girl was taken by surprise.

"What did you just say?!" she fumed.

"You heard me you phony die_ hure." _

For a second Shikinami just glared icy daggers at Mari while the others watched on in varying degrees of interest and discomfort.

"Anyways, I should be goin…" Mari was cut off as her legs were swept out from under her by Shikinami, causing her to fall backwards onto the concrete pathway.

"Oh, wow, you insulted me in my native tongue. I'm_ sooo _crushed. I think I'll run back to my girlfriend for a good long cry," Asuka mocked as she stood over her.

_Don't cry. Whatever you do, don't cry. It's only going to fuel her._

"Listen here you airhead," Asuka continued. "You're the only phony here. I'm not sure how a seventh rate pilot and a cheap knockoff of an Evangelion managed to get here in direct violation of the treaty, but I'm going to find out and when I do you're going away, back to whatever sheep farm you came from."

She walked away, her attention now focused on Shinji.

Rage boiled inside Mari, she wanted nothing more than to leap up and take her down her a peg, multiple pegs, while repeatedly kicking her in the shins.

_Yes, beat the crap out of your… someone who looks almost exactly like your mom, that's not weird at all._

"Are you okay?" Kensuke asked as he helped pull up.

Shikinami was now yelling at Shinji over not being there to help her, even though in the same breath she said she didn't need any help.

"I've been worse," Mari replied.

_Not much though._

"What a bitch!" Touji commented.

Mari nodded in agreement.

"Like I was trying to say, I got something to go to. So I'm going to have to leave you guys with _that._" she pointed to Shikinami, who was now staring down a very nervous Shinji. "Catch you around."

Mari walked away quickly, not because she wanted to get away from Shikinami, although that was a part of it, mostly she just wanted a chance to explore Tokyo-3 before she met up with Mana.

She'd dreamed of coming here for two years. She wanted a chance to really see what it was like, to see if it was anything like the stories they told her and the pictures she saw. Would it be even half what she imagined?

/

Commander Ikari was displeased.

"It was supposed to be destroyed."

"There was a… minor technical complication," Kaji explained. "The software I was given to activate the self-destruct failed, and the manual backup was discovered and destroyed."

"How big of a problem is this going to be?"

"Minor at best. Bethany's officially out of commission and most of IPEA's remaining resources are being devoted towards keeping Unit-05 operational. The two people in charge of IPEA in Japan should be watched, they were in charge of watching _it_ after all. They can be managed though, Ryan's too paranoid to take any action against us, and Kirishima wouldn't breathe if she thought Jack might not approve. Any attempts at eliminating them would draw too much unwanted attention though. The pilot can be… problematic, behavior wise, and was pretty much brainwashed by IPEA, but she cares more about piloting than anything else. As long as there is the promise of piloting she can be controlled."

Gendo was completely unreadable as always.

"What about her history?"

"Doesn't seem to care. Never once talked about the incident in London after I mentioned it. Didn't even try to contact surviving relatives," Kaji before shifting topics. "Now as for my report on SEELE."

"Already looked over. The reports on Unit-06 were most informative."

Well at least something was going right.

"Glad to be of help… I imagine you want to look at the item you requested."

Gendo opened the case on his desk, letting out an unearthly glow.

"The lost Key of Nebuchadnezzar, the metaphysical twining between God and the soul," Kaji began.

"And it will open the door to human instrumentality," Gendo finished.

"Well, if that's all, I have other things to look after."

/

The first time Mari saw Tokyo-3 it was nothing more than gigantic hole in the ground. A truly gigantic hole that seemed both impossibly wide and so deep it looked like it reached the very core of the world, but still, it was just a hole. There wasn't anything really left standing of the city, or the mountain that it used to stand on. Mari wasn't sure what she had expected, the pictures and stories she heard about it seemed impossible. No building could possibly be that tall and thin. But they were true, every single last one of them.

She stared up at the buildings surrounding her, the smallest of which were bigger than any building she'd seen outside of Bethany, and the tallest of which reached so high up Mari couldn't see the top of no matter how much she craned her head back, and they were so clean and bright! The buildings back home where dull, cracked, often covered in plants, and those were the better off ones. Bethany was huge, but it was a windowless, dull, red thing that was mostly underwater. The nearby city was in much better condition than the houses around home, but most of the still-standing buildings were basically concrete slabs with tiny windows, not exactly something that was pretty to look at.

Tokyo-3 on the other hand was so pretty it was almost overwhelming. Massive towers of glass and steel, short black monoliths that seemed far more immense then they were, thin buildings that reflected prismatic light and seemed to move with the sun itself! Things at street level were just as amazing, if not more so. Advertisements were everywhere. Multicolored signs pointed to a "club" of some sort while a billboard cycled between ads for a brand of grape soda, a movie called _Blasto!_, and a nearby zoo. The streets were lined with shops selling everything from electronics to erasers in the shape fruit and animals. Mari had absolutely no idea why anyone would want an apple-shaped eraser or what they would do with it, but something about it amazed her all the same.

Mari wandered down the streets for a while, trying to take in every sight she could. Eventually she found herself a crowded intersection that was utterly packed with people.

_What are they waiting for, can't they just cross? The cars are barely moving you could just walk between them._

Mari waited; one the signs changed from a hand to a stick figure walking caused the crowd to move, _finally._

Maybe a quarter of the crowd moved before the sign changed back to a hand, causing the crowd to stop.

She stared at the sign in confused rage. Why the hell would it change back before everyone was across?

A tall, older looking man in a business suit standing next to her looked just as angry. "Damn new laws," he complained. "Back in old Tokyo you could walk across the street whenever you wanted to. The cars feared you, not the other way around."

Mari fumed there for a minute before deciding 'the hell with it' she was going to cross the road now before she died from boredom.

The moment she put her foot on the asphalt, a chorus of car horns was unleashed.

She froze. She looked to her left to an angry man in a tiny car laying on his horn while motioning for her to get off road.

She stared at him for a second before bolting, weaving in-between cars while they honked at her and their pilots shouted angrily at her.

As Mari got to the other side she looked back. A few of the crowd stared at her like she was idiot while the rest were either distracted by something else or didn't care.

The sign changed back to a man and crowd started moving again.

After wandering for a while Mari found herself in a rather boring looking street. Her attention finally turned away from the buildings she realized she really should be getting to the mall Mana told her to meet at.

She pulled out her phone.

*NO SERVICE*

Well, that was a problem.

"How do I get it back into service?" Mari wondered to herself.

She walked around with it for a little while, after a few minutes it said it had service with two little bars in the corner

"Finally!" Mari started pressing buttons, trying to access the map.

*Low Battery*

The phone shut off.

"Goddamnit!"

_Okay Mari, you can figure this out. It's just a building, finding a building shouldn't be that hard. Maybe I can ask someone._

"Excuse me, man," Mari said as she approached a guy in bright casual clothes. "Do you know the way to…"

He ignored her and walked right on by.

"Jackass!" Mari shouted.

That was very frustrating. Why would someone just ignore another like that?

Mari spotted a woman in a business suit.

"Could you help me…"

The lady damn near broke into a run to get away from her.

_The hell is wrong with people? _Mari wondered. It wasn't like she smelled or anything.

Crowds of people walked by as she stood on the street corner, she spotted a man in flora wear on the outside of the crowd.

"I need to find a way to the New Sunshine City Mall."

"Buy a map," he said gruffly.

"Well where the hell do I buy a map?!"

"Not my problem," he said as he walked away.

Oh sure, it's not his problem, and if an Evangelion pilot got lost and hit by a car all because he couldn't be bothered to give her directions. Then it would be his and everyone else in the whole damn world's problem.

This problem repeated itself for a while. Mari would ask someone and they would either ignore her, run away from her, explain they were too busy to answer her, or just brushed her off rudely.

Mari was baffled, she didn't smell and she was trying to greet them, so why the hell could no one in this damn city answer one question?!

Eventually she stumbled across a convenience store, with maps in the front.

With a sigh of relief Mari grabbed one and starting looking for the mall.

"Okay, if I'm here and it's there I just need to…" Mari trailed off as a shadow came over her.

She looked up to see a tall tan man with a lot of facial hair, more than Kaji by a fair margin, looking at her with annoyance.

"You need to pay for that."

"I'm just using it for one thing," she explained.

The man looked even more annoyed.

"You still have to pay for it."

"I'm a pilot," Mari blurted out.

"Good for you, still have to pay."

Mari was at the end of her rope at this point. Getting the cold shoulder from half of Tokyo-3 was bad enough, but this guy was just impossible. Why did he care so much about getting money for this map?

She pulled out her old Bethany ID.

"You don't understand. I am an Evangelion pilot; I need this map for… Eva piloting related business."

The man looked at the ID skeptically. "Why?"

Mari struggled to find an answer. "Because I need to get somewhere, and what if an Angel attacks and I can't get to where I need to go because I'm lost without a map? That means I can't get to my Eva, which means I can't stop the Angel from leveling the city. Is that what you want, asshole? Your city destroyed because you're unwilling to part with cheap little map?!"

"..Just take it," the man said in annoyance as he went back to his register.

"_Thank you_," Mari said sarcastically as she departed.

/

The mall was pretty much the city condensed, shops of all sorts across multiple floors, with a giant ass cafeteria called a food court in the middle. Mari found Mana waiting for her there.

"Have any problems finding the place?" Mana asked between sips of a bright orange drink.

"Uh yeah, found it just fine… _Just fine_. So what's the plan?" Mari said, trying to pretend the past hour didn't happen.

"Alright," Mana said casually. "First we got to do a bunch of shopping for you: clothes, school stuff, maybe a few fun things. Do you like shopping?"

Mari looked at the surrounding food court. "Is there any risk of something collapsing on us?"

"…No."

Mari was relieved, "Good, yeah I'm all for shopping."

"Ookay, so after we do that I got to get you signed up for school, get you all the ID cards you'll need for outside Nerv, then I'll get you moved in with Asuka and Shinji, and then finally I have to go get on my hands and knees and beg Nerv to not try and decommission Unit-05."

"Wait… move in with Shinji and _Shikinami_?!"

"Yep, Nerv would prefer if the pilots lived together, helps unit cohesion and stuff like that. Well except for Rei, but Rei's… Rei."

Mari fumed. "I refuse, can't I live you instead?"

Mana choked on her drink. "What… No! No. That would end terribly for both of us."

"Why?"

"Because… Okay, how I'm acting right now, that's all it is. An act for you and work, at home I'm a foul mouthed asshole who drinks a lot and has a different man over every night. It's a terrible environment for a girl your age to be living in."

_Sounds a lot like my mom's description of Misato, and yet you have no problem sending me to her._

"But you're my guardian… wait, what are the men over for?"

Mana started sweating bullets "…Let's just pretend I never said that bit and move on. Okay technically yes I am your guardian, but Nerv wants you with the other pilots and frankly I'm really not in a position to take care of you, hang out occasionally sure, but that's pretty much all I can do. Besides, you'll eventually work out your differences with As... Shikinami, it will probably take one or more life threatening incidents, but you'll learn to at least tolerate each other."

Mari let out a low growl.

"Or you will kill each other Battle Royale style."

/

A few hours later Mari was struggling under the weight of all the boxes and bags she was carrying as they exited the mall.

"Are you okay?" Mana was only carrying two bags.

"Just fine."

"You sure? I could carry some of it."

"I'm fine," she insisted.

"Why did you even go to the home improvement store?"

"It has useful things," Mari explained.

"Useful for _what_?"

Mari struggled to come up with something she could tell Mana. "I…well…you see…Why did Misato say my Eva wasn't designed to survive more than one battle?"

"What?"

Mari pressed, determined not to let the topic switch back. "Yeah, Misato was acting like everyone was surprised that my Eva survived the fight."

She sighed and looked around intently. "We'll talk about in the rental car."

A few minutes later they were in the brown rental car. Mari's stuff piled in the back.

"Alright…you know the provisional status in front of Unit-05?" Mana asked.

"Yeah."

"And there was the attempt to replace it with the Third Angel, and the other Eva."

"Yeah, hey, what are they doing with that anyway?"

"Think they're to sending to the Nerv base in Nevada; be thankful they didn't send you with it. The pilot Jack used to work with is there as part of some sort of crazy experiment that will probably get everyone killed. Point is provisional status means exactly that. It was only supposed to be there until we managed to get a better replacement, most people actually didn't think it would come out of that battle alive, just slow it down enough for another Eva to dispatch it before it wrecked too much havoc."

Mari wasn't sure how to feel. Proud for having survived a fight people were sure would kill her? Or upset at the fact that she was considered so disposable?

"So what does that mean about me being here?"

"Officially, you're only considered a backup pilot, only to be used in emergency situations."

"…isn't every Angel attack an emergency?"

"There are emergencies and then there are _emergencies."_

"So that means…"

"Probably not going to pilot every mission."

Mari hung her head in disappointment. She just knew Shikinami was going to mock her constantly over her "back-up pilot" status. Piloting was all she had, and now it sounded like that too was being taken away from her. She was now fairly sure the universe was actively conspiring against her.

"Hey it could be worse," Mana said trying to comfort her. "You're going to be piloting more than you would have if we went with Jack's original plans. You'll also get to have more of a real life, you haven't had one of those in over two years."

"Yeah…" Mari said half heartily.

Mana stared at her with worry.

"Look… I know things haven't been going well for you recently, Shikinami, the death of that Aoi woman . . ."

Mari looked at her in surprise.

"Yes, I know about that, not something a kid your age should be exposed to. I know all that on top of what I just told you probably leaves you in a pretty bad place emotionally, but there is bright spot in all this."

"Really?" Mari asked skeptically.

"Bethany was a disaster, but it's a disaster you survived. When almost no one thought you would, you pulled off a victory many thought impossible. The provisional label and your back-up pilot status? That just means no one's going to see you coming when you save the world. The others may view you with suspicion and hate now but soon enough they'll treat us like heroes. "

Mari's eyes lit up with excitement.

"Seriously? Not just saying that?"

"Trust me, Mari. You were put here to do big things."

/

They stood in the hallway just outside the apartment. Mari's things piled up to one side.

Misato's apartment. Her parents had always spoken of this place fondly - well, relatively speaking. They never made it out to be a paradise but it did sound like home most of the time.

"So are you okay?" Mana asked.

She shrugged. "Better."

Mana's pep talk certainly helped, but the back-up pilot status was twisting inside her gut something awful, and she knew Shikinami was behind that door.

"Do you want me to get you a rebreather full of LCL, or something?"

Mari raised an eyebrow.

"No offense, but those depressive mood swings of yours are annoying."

"I'm not depressive, the world's just keeps bumming me out. Are you sure I can't move in Rei? I'll be good."

Rei terrified her, but she would rather be scared then deal with Shikinami.

Mana shook her head. "Nerv would freak out; Jack would freak out; you would go insane."

"Oh…what?"

"You said hi to Rei earlier right?"

"Yeah."

"Unnerved the hell out of you?"

"…Yeah."

"You don't want to spend all day around that, especially considering how boring it will likely be there."

Mana stared at the door.

"Probably should knock shouldn't we?"

"Probably."

"Shikinami might answer the door though."

Mari let out a low growl of annoyance.

"Down girl. Okay, we can do this. It's just a snarky thirteen year old girl. We can deal with this."

"Why are you scared?" Mari asked. "You haven't dealt with her."

"Yeah, but I know the type very well."

Mana reluctantly knocked on the door. After a moment the door opened, revealing Shinji in a blue apron.

"Oh, would you look at the time!" Mana exclaimed as she looked at her bare wrist. "I just remembered to have a meeting at Nerv in fifteen minutes! So sorry, have to run."

Mana fled, leaving Ikari and Mari standing there awkwardly.

/

The reintroduction was about what Mari expected. Shinji and Misato where friendly, although Shinji seemed unusually distant for some reason, mostly concerned with the lack of space her being here would cause. Shikinami was hostile, beyond hostile. Clearly already upset that she had to live with Shinji. Mari took no small amount of pleasure with how much having to live with a "provisional pilot" upset the German.

The apartment itself was… well, to be perfectly honest Mari couldn't really look at the apartment, there was so much of Shikinami's stuff in the way. Mari had never seen so much stuff in one place before. Boxes lined up to the ceiling, boxes taking up almost all of an entire room, and they were all full of Shikinami's stuff that came over with her. She couldn't even begin to imagine how the hell one person could have so much stuff. Her house back home didn't have this much stuff, and it was easily three times as big as this place. At this rate she would have to sell a few of her things or she wouldn't have a place to sleep… where was she going to sleep anyways?

Mari turned off the shower, steam pouring through the bathroom as she stepped out and went to dry herself off.

Her foot bumped into something warm, squishy, and weirdly smooth feeling, it squawked at her.

Mari grabbed her glasses off the sink and looked down to see an annoyed looking penguin with a towel.

"Well, hello, you must be Pen-Pen. I've heard a lot about you," Mari said with a smile, at least this part of her parent's stories was true.

Pen-Pen stared at her in confusion.

"What? You're a famous penguin where I come from. Of course I've heard of you."

He squawked at her, sniffed slightly, and then looked at the door, or rather what was on the other side of the door.

He then turned back to her with an expression of confusion. Well, what looked like the penguin equivalent of confusion. It squawked at her again in a lower tone.

"Wow, you figured that out quickly."

The penguin turned around and made its way towards the door.

"Where are you going?"

He didn't answer.

"Wait…No no, you can't tell them! It's too soon!"

Mari rushed to stop the bird, but he was already out the door.

She followed, her towel forgotten about on the floor.

/

Things were pretty calm. Shinji was fixing dinner, Misato was saying her usual about how good her can of beer was, and Asuka was watching both of them with disdain.

"WHATEVER THAT PENGUIN SAYS IS A LIE!" 

The calm was shattered as Mari barged out of the bathroom and Pen-Pen waddled up to Misato.

"He's just a penguin, what could he say…"

Shinji froze as he turned and saw Mari; the only thing covering her was a pair of red glasses and a well placed bendy straw.

Shinji's face turned a shade of red thought impossible, Misato was more interested in what Pen-Pen was trying to say, and Asuka was enraged.

First at Mari for her indecent stupidity, then she caught a glance of Shinji staring. He wasn't staring with any sort of lust, more like a deer caught in the headlights. It didn't matter to Asuka, he was a pervert in her eyes.

She just about leaped out of her chair and delivered a high kick to Shinji that sent him to the ground in a confused heap.

"Well that was pointlessly mean," Mari said indignantly as she glared at the girl, her arms at her hips.

"Put on some damn clothes!" Asuka shouted.

"Why did you even do that?"

"He was staring at your little strip tease, you idiot!"

"My what?" Mari asked as Shinji picked himself, making absolutely sure he was looking in the absolute opposite direction of Mari, and had his eyes covered.

Asuka was flabbergasted "Are you dense or something?! You're parading around in the nude and he's gawking at _that_. How hard is this to understand?!"

Mari looked down in confusion. "Why?"

Asuka howled in frustration. "Put some fucking clothes on before I beat you to within of your life you stupid stupid girl!"

Mari gave her an annoyed look "Fine, fine. _Werido_."

Shinji had to hold Asuka down as Mari closed the bathroom door behind her.

/

"So Misato, I've been meaning to ask, where am I sleeping?" Mari asked as Shinji served dinner.

"Oh you're bunking with Asuka." Misato said casually.

Mari stared at her in confused terror "…That's a joke, right?"

"We don't exactly have a lot of room you know."

Shikinami slammed her hands on the table. "This is unacceptable!"

"Yeah, why can't I just sleep with Shinji instead?" Mari added

Everyone suddenly stared at her

"What?"

Misato laughed and Shinji was looking very uncomfortable.

"I'm surrounded by perverts." Shikinami muttered

"Seriously what? He has the room for another sleeping bag."

"Mari… do you know what Men and women do sometimes when they stay in the same room together?" Misato asked.

"…Sleep," Mari said in confusion

Shikinami slammed her head into the table, causing everything to shake a little.

"Okay let me try this another way. Mari, have you ever walked in on your parents doing…stuff? Maybe heard strange noises, moans, beds shaking?"

"No, not really. I mean, I did occasionally hear my dad crying softly, for hours."

Everyone was staring at her again, with looks of terror and disgust plastered across their faces.

"Too much information, Illustrious," Shikinami said.

_Nobody asked you!_

"I…I…Point is that it would be inappropriate for you to stay with Shinji. Hilarious, but inappropriate."

"Fine, you got a closet or something I can stay in then?"

"Well, there is the sun bed out…"

"Good great, sold," Mari said with relief.

"But it's outside, in the heat and stuff."

"I would sleep in a doorway if I had to."

"Come on, sleeping in the same room as Shikinami wouldn't be that bad."

Mari and Shikinami glared at her angrily

"Oooor you could just sleep outside, that works too."

/

"Even at night the city's beautiful. You guys really had something special here," Mari went on as she propped open the locket on a table and laid back on the sun bed.

"When you guys get here we should get our own place. Maybe in one of the rotating buildings; that would be awesome. I mean, I know you guys like the old place, but it is so far away from here."

Mari paused and looked up at the sky. She couldn't see the stars at all through all the light in the city, but she could still make out the moon and that damn red streak across it.

"I think Pen-Pen knows who I am really. I'm not sure how, but he got this look in his eye that just screamed it. Not a problem though - well, now that he's stop trying to tell Misato it's not. Oh, speaking of which, Misato proved to be nice, bit weird though. Drinking is kind of worrying because well… you know. Probably no big deal though, certainly not as bad as that damn Shikinami. Hopefully you'll been able to explain that if you get here, Mom."

"…When you get here."


End file.
